Baidu Introduces New AI Chips to Boost China’s Domestic Computing Power

Baidu has announced two new artificial intelligence chips designed to strengthen China’s access to advanced, cost-efficient, and locally controlled computing power. The launch comes as ongoing U.S.–China tensions continue to limit Chinese companies’ access to high-end U.S. AI processors, pushing domestic tech giants to accelerate their semiconductor development efforts.

At the Baidu World technology conference, the company revealed the M100 inference chip, expected to be released in early 2026, and the M300, a more advanced processor capable of both AI training and inference, slated for early 2027. Training enables AI models to learn from large datasets, while inference allows those models to generate predictions and respond to user queries in real time.

Baidu has been building proprietary semiconductor technology since 2011, and this latest announcement reinforces its long-term commitment to reducing reliance on foreign chips. Alongside the new processors, the company unveiled two high-performance “supernode” products. These systems use advanced networking to interconnect hundreds of chips, boosting total computing output and helping overcome limitations found in individual processors.

The move mirrors similar advances by Huawei, whose CloudMatrix 384 — a cluster of 384 Ascend 910C chips — has been compared to or even regarded as more powerful than Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72, one of the U.S. chipmaker’s top system-level offerings. Huawei has also shared plans to release even stronger supernode systems in the coming years, signaling an industry-wide push toward large-scale, domestically driven AI infrastructure.

Baidu’s new supernodes will include the Tianchi 256, built with 256 P800 chips and launching in the first half of next year. A larger 512-chip version is scheduled for the second half of the year, offering expanded processing capabilities for enterprise-level AI workloads.

The company also introduced an upgraded version of its Ernie large language model, designed to deliver improved performance not only in text generation but also in image and video analysis. With these advances, Baidu aims to strengthen China’s position in the global AI race by offering competitive, homegrown alternatives to foreign technologies.