Baidu has announced the establishment of two new departments: the "Basic Model R&D Department" and the "Application Model R&D Department," both reporting directly to CEO Li Yanhong. Wu Tian and Jia Lei will lead these departments respectively, focusing on the parallel advancement of general large models and scenario-specific models. Wang Haifeng will continue to serve as the Group CTO, TSC Chair, and Director of Baidu Institute.
Organizational Positioning
- Basic Model R&D Department: Focuses on high-intelligence, scalable general AGI large models, leading the next generation of ERNIE foundation and key algorithm breakthroughs
- Application Model R&D Department: Optimizes specialized models for business scenarios, explores industry plugins and lightweight solutions, accelerating the commercialization of 5.0 multi-modal capabilities
Personnel Background
Wu Tian (VP of Baidu, founder of PaddlePaddle and ERNIE) and Jia Lei (expert in speech and vision multi-modal technologies) are both internal technical executives who have been nurtured within the company. Their promotions reflect Baidu's "younger management" strategy and the allocation of resources to the large model field.
Product Progress
The ERNIE Large Model 5.0, released on November 13, uses a 2.4 trillion parameter architecture with an ultra-sparse MoE structure, natively supporting unified input and output for text, images, audio, and video. In the latest LMArena ranking, ERNIE 5.0 Preview achieved joint second place globally for text and first domestically, and first domestically for visual understanding.
Implementation Plan
Baidu has designated 2026 as the "ERNIE Ecosystem Year." The two R&D departments will collaborate with business lines such as Baidu Cloud, ACE, and Apollo to launch over 20 industry large models and 50 scenario plugins before the first quarter, aiming for large model usage to account for more than 80% within three years, further solidifying its position among the top tier domestically.
