Baidu to Invest $1.5B for Self-driving Car Projects

Chinese web services company Baidu Inc. announced a $1.5 billion fund, or 10 billion CNY, to support self-driving tech companies, as part of its move to expand its technical development and vie with rivals in the United States, such as Google parent company Alphabet and Waymo, its subsidiary specializing in self-driving cars, and automaker company Tesla.

Baidu’s Autonomous Car Investment

The new funding is said to be an addition to Baidu’s already operational autonomous driving platform, named Apollo, which it rolled out for the automobile industry freely available in April, in efforts to boost progress. It has already secured over 70 automakers on what it being flaunted as the “Android of the auto industry.” Some of its partner claims include Hyundai, Bosch, Continental, NVIDIA, Microsoft Cloud, Velodyne, TomTom, UCAR, and Grab.

According to the company, the investment will fund 100 self-driving projects over the next three years.

This is the second large-scale investment firm Baidu has launched in recent times. Last month, it unlocked a $1.5 billion fund in partnership with China Life Insurance Group targeted at late-stage deals with companies with “significant association” with China.

The move coincides with the release of Apollo 1.5, the second generation of the company’s open-source autonomous car software. It has an added core features such as cloud simulation, high-definition maps, end-to-end deep learning, and obstacle perception to “provide more comprehensive solutions to developers and ecosystem partners to accelerate the deployment of autonomous driving,“ the company said.

To date, about 1,300 companies have downloaded the Apollo source code, and over 100 others have applied to open data via the Apollo website.

The Apollo project aims to develop technology for completely self-driving cars, which it says will be ready for city roads in China by 2020.

About Baidu

Currently, Baidu is testing autonomous vehicle technology in both China and the U.S, the homeland of Alphabet’s Waymo which recently teamed up with Intel to ramp up its autonomous driving sensors.

The Beijing-based giant company is one of the largest internet companies, and one of the premiers AI leaders in the world. Its search engine dominates the Chinese internet, and online ads are a key revenue stream.

But since the restriction by the authorities on its online advertising business after a widespread scandal last year over the promotion of a fake medical treatment, “China’s Google” is seeking to concentrate on artificial intelligence, investing heavily in the sector.

The Chinese giant aims to be the first to develop a vehicle capable of driving itself via powerful software and sensors.

Baidu is also reportedly partnering with Udacity, a Silicon Valley online education platform, to foster required talent globally by introducing self-driving courses, certifications, special competitions, and other talent services.

In the same sector, there’s Apple that is developing its own technology,  as well as sampling self-driving shuttle services in Silicon Valley. Also, there’s Samsung that has just secured a permit to run its self-driving vehicles on public roads in the U.S.

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