Baidu Inc

Baidu, Inc. ( BY-doo; Chinese: 百度; pinyin: Bǎidù; lit. 'hundred times') is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a leading share of China's search engine market via Baidu Search and provides other internet services, including Baidu App (its flagship app for search and newsfeed), Baidu Baike (a user-edited, Wikipedia-like encyclopedia), iQIYI (a video streaming service), Baidu Tieba (a forum platform similar to Reddit), and ES File Explorer.

Besides its core internet search business, Baidu has diversified into autonomous driving (Baidu Apollo), smart consumer electronics (Xiaodu), and an AI technology stack covering software, chips, cloud infrastructure, foundation models, and applications.

A variable interest entity for Baidu to enable investment of foreign capital is incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Baidu was incorporated in January 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu. Baidu has origins in RankDex, an earlier search engine developed by Robin Li in 1996, before he founded Baidu in 2000. The company is headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District.

In December 2007, Baidu became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index. As of May 2018, Baidu's market cap rose to US$99 billion. In October 2018, Baidu became the first Chinese firm to join the United States–based computer ethics consortium Partnership on AI. The Chinese government views Baidu as one of its national champion corporations.