Baidu, Huawei in strategic pact to foster AI development

Baidu Inc on Thursday reached a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement with Huawei Technologies Co to build a mobile and artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem, said a statement Baidu sent to the Global Times.

The companies will create a new mobile and AI ecosystem by leveraging Huawei’s HiAI platform and Baidu Brain, a compendium of the company’s AI assets and services, and combine hardware and software to provide global consumers with new smart service experiences, according to the statement.

The partnership is not surprising because the two companies have very strong “technology genes” and grow through independent research and development technology, Baidu CEO Robin Li Yanhong said.

Li said that the Internet era is giving way to the AI era, and as Baidu has long explored in the AI sector and Huawei has a large customer base, the cooperation will allow them to do many things that were impossible in the past, according to the statement.

Huawei will work with Baidu to promote industrial innovation and the maturing of next-generation smartphones, aiming to create “smart life experiences” for global consumers, Yu Chengdong, CEO of the Huawei Consumer Business Group, was quoted as saying in the statement.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on December 14 rolled out an action plan to improve the AI sector in the next three years, eying breakthroughs in basic research and wide applications in multiple areas ranging from smart automobiles to robots and drones.