Strategically related however commercially restricted
However, Randall stated, Baidu “remains under immense pressure from emerging startups like DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and the cloud giants like Alibaba. While still a heavyweight, Baidu is not unchallenged in China.”
He added that, throughout western nations, Baidu stays largely irrelevant due to the dearth of belief in geopolitics, and the decoupling of the US and Chinese tech ecosystems. “[This] makes Western expansion near impossible. Moreover, in global AI model benchmarks, Baidu is mostly a secondary mention against the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Mistral.”
But general, stated Randall, “Baidu remains strategically relevant globally, but commercially limited across the West. The key takeaway for western AI companies is that innovation is not US-centric, but that only assists in pushing the AI race forward.”