Baidu

Robin Li launched the company in January 2000 after developing RankDex, a search engine project he started in 1996 while working at IDD Information Services. The firm established its headquarters in Beijing's Haidian District and quickly built a database containing over a trillion Chinese web pages. Its namesake platform dominates the local search market, serving as the primary gateway for information within mainland China.

Beyond search, the ecosystem includes Baidu Baike, a user-generated encyclopedia, and Baidu Tieba, a forum system that mirrors Reddit's community structure. The company also produces Baidu Maps and smart home devices like the Xiaodu speaker. Recent strategic pivots focus heavily on artificial intelligence, featuring the Ernie large language model series and Apollo Go autonomous ride-hailing services.

Despite facing stiff competition from Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance, Baidu remains largely isolated from Western markets due to regulatory barriers. The company lists shares on the NASDAQ under the ticker BIDU and on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as 9888. In August 2026, it announced a partnership with Uber to launch fully driverless Apollo Go taxis in Dubai, creating the first multi-partner autonomous network globally. [edit]