Baidu AI bets on accessibility: new Ernie 4.5 Turbo and X1 Turbo models with record-breaking prices
On April 25, 2025, Baidu introduced two new AI models at the Baidu Create conference in Wuhan, China: the multimodal Ernie 4.5 Turbo and the reasoning-focused Ernie X1 Turbo, thereby strengthening its AI product portfolio. According to a PR Newswire press release, Ernie 4.5 Turbo is offered at just 20% of the cost of the original ERNIE 4.5, while X1 Turbo costs half as much as its predecessor, significantly reducing access costs to advanced AI for developers. Reuters notes that this move responds to growing pressure from domestic rivals such as DeepSeek, Alibaba and ByteDance, and aims to keep Baidu at the forefront of China’s AI market. Bloomberg then points out that the price of Ernie 4.5 Turbo was reduced by as much as 80% compared with the previous version, stirring up a “price war” in the industry.
Key features of Ernie 4.5 Turbo
Ernie 4.5 Turbo delivers significantly faster response times, facilitating real-time deployment and interactive applications. According to Robin Li, the model achieved results on par with the best global models in code-generation benchmark tests, excelling in both coding and linguistic analysis tasks. With its price set at 20% of the original ERNIE 4.5’s cost, this performance is now accessible to smaller developers and startups as well.
Ernie X1 Turbo: enhanced reasoning capabilities
Ernie X1 Turbo represents a new generation of reasoning models designed for complex tasks requiring deep logical reasoning. At the same time, the model maintains cost efficiency—it costs only half as much as its predecessor, lowering barriers to adoption in the corporate sector.
Integration into the ecosystem and developer tools
Alongside the launch of the new models, Baidu also introduced a suite of developer tools that includes the so-called AI Open Initiative, enabling easy access to APIs and monetization programs. At the conference, it also demonstrated the Xinxiang application, a multi-agent platform supporting more than 200 types of tasks, illustrating the practical use of the models in real-world scenarios. In addition, it integrated the Model Context Protocol (MCP) into its cloud services, improving contextual understanding and the efficiency of deploying AI models at the enterprise scale.
Competitive context
This move comes at a time when domestic rivals such as DeepSeek, Alibaba and ByteDance are investing significant resources in their own AI solutions and seeking to capture a share of the growing market. The aggressive pricing policy, with an 80% discount on Ernie 4.5 Turbo and X1 Turbo priced at half the cost, clearly reflects Baidu’s effort to gain an advantage through a “price war.” Nevertheless, there should be no doubts about the quality—according to internal benchmarks, X1 Turbo outperforms even advanced versions of DeepSeek on several key tasks.
Market impact and the future
Baidu has committed to training 10 million AI professionals over the next five years, strengthening its long-term ecosystem and the availability of a skilled workforce. The company has also announced the third annual ERNIE Cup competition, with a prize of 70 million Chinese yuan, to motivate the developer community to innovate. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s calls for AI self-sufficiency further reinforce political support for domestic artificial intelligence development.
The launch of Ernie 4.5 Turbo and Ernie X1 Turbo, featuring drastic price reductions and a rich suite of developer tools, represents a key milestone in the competitive struggle for leadership in China’s AI sector. As the market continues to evolve, Baidu’s strategy could significantly influence the standards of accessibility and performance for AI technologies among a broad community of users and businesses.
