Who owns ERNIE Bot?
ERNIE Bot is owned by Baidu (China, NASDAQ: BIDU).[1]
Evidence: Baidu, Inc. Annual Report on Form 20-F filed 2026-03-17, SEC EDGAR, 17 March 2026. Verified from filings; last checked .
Key facts
- Current owner
- Baidu, Inc. verified
- Owner HQ
- 🇨🇳 China, Beijing
- Origin
- 🇨🇳 China
- Founded
- 2023
- Category
- Internet & digital › Digital services › Productivity & developer tools
- Parent ticker
- NASDAQ: BIDU HKEX: 9888
- Last verified
- · 1 sources
About ERNIE Bot
ERNIE Bot is Baidu's conversational AI assistant, launched in the first quarter of 2023 on desktop and mobile and powered by the company's in-house ERNIE foundation models. Baidu charged a subscription for access to its ERNIE 4.0 model from November 2023, which it says made it the first company in China to charge users for such a model, and made the assistant free to everyone from 1 April 2025.
What Baidu's annual report says about ERNIE Bot
Sentences about ERNIE Bot from Baidu's latest annual filing[1], copied word for word.
To capture this opportunity, we launched ERNIE Bot, our conversational AI bot powered by ERNIE, our in-house foundation model, in the first quarter of 2023.
In May 2023, we launched ERNIE 3.5, which served as the latest foundation model powering ERNIE Bot at that time.
Starting from November 1, 2023, EB4 has been open to the public through ERNIE Bot at a subscription fee.
How often Baidu names ERNIE Bot in its annual report
A plain count of the times the name appears in the text of each annual report, not counting the start of a sentence. A brand that an owner writes about more is usually one it treats as central. The brand is named more often than it was three years earlier.
Ownership timeline of ERNIE Bot
Where ERNIE Bot sits in Baidu
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
Open the full Baidu ownership tree →
See the full Baidu brand portfolio (14) →
Other brands owned by Baidu
Baidu controls 14 brands on Brandtree, 14 of them in internet & digital.
Also in internet & digital
Other brands in productivity & developer tools, and who owns them
The 32 brands in productivity & developer tools on Brandtree belong to 20 owners. The largest is Dropbox, with 6; Baidu has 3.
| Brand | Owner | Owner based in |
|---|---|---|
| DocSend | Dropbox | 🇺🇸 United States |
| 4PS | Hilti | 🇱🇮 Liechtenstein |
| Google Cloud | Alphabet | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Angi | IAC | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Base44 | Wix | 🇮🇱 Israel |
| DingTalk | Alibaba | 🇭🇰 Hong Kong |
| Amazon Web Services | Amazon | 🇺🇸 United States |
| OpenTable | Booking Holdings | 🇺🇸 United States |
Every brand in productivity & developer tools and its owner →
About the owner: Baidu
Baidu is a publicly listed company headquartered in Beijing, China, founded in 2000. Brandtree records 14 brands under its control, and it is listed as NASDAQ: BIDU and HKEX: 9888.
Baidu describes itself as a leading AI company with a strong internet foundation. It was founded as a search engine business in 2000, incorporated in the Cayman Islands that January, and runs three main areas: a Mobile Ecosystem of more than a dozen apps built around Baidu App, an AI Cloud division, and intelligent driving, which includes the Apollo Go robotaxi service. Baidu General Business — the group excluding its separately listed video service iQIYI — contributed over 70 per cent of revenue in each of 2023, 2024 and 2025. Its shares trade on Nasdaq and, since March 2021, on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
🇨🇳 ERNIE Bot and other Chinese brands
Brandtree records a controlling owner for 319 brands that began in China. 39 of them (12%) are now controlled by a company headquartered in another country; ERNIE Bot is not one of them.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the parent company of ERNIE Bot?
The parent company of ERNIE Bot is Baidu, a publicly listed company headquartered in China.
Is ERNIE Bot Chinese?
Yes. ERNIE Bot originated in China in 2023 and its owner, Baidu, is also headquartered in China.
Is ERNIE Bot still owned by Baidu?
Yes. As of 9 October 2026, ERNIE Bot is still owned by Baidu. The ownership record was last checked against primary sources on that date.
Sources (1) & corrections
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
- [1] Baidu, Inc. Annual Report on Form 20-F filed 2026-03-17 — SEC EDGAR, SEC Form 20-F, published 17 March 2026; retrieved 26 September 2026.
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