US shares of the Chinese tech giant Baidu gained after the company revealed its Ernie X1 model, said to be as capable and more cost efficient than DeepSeek.

Baidu introduced Ernie X1, a reasoning model that can support tools such as advanced search, generation of AI images, and webpage reading.

Baidu Inc. released a new artificial intelligence model that articulates its reasoning, in an apparent bid to regain momentum against up-and-coming rivals like DeepSeek.The Ernie X1 model by China’s internet search leader works similarly to DeepSeek R1 — which shocked Silicon Valley by offering comparable performance to the world’s best chatbots at a fraction of their development cost.