The Chinese tech giant, Baidu extends the rally in the stock following the entry into the challenge of artificial intelligence with the launch of Ernie 3.5. It is an AI model that will power the Baidu chatbot, Ernie Bot. Following the announcement, made on Friday May 26, the stock experienced a sharp rise during the Wall Street session, reaching $126 per share (+6.35%). But the rally continued into the Asian session as well. We recall that Baidu is also listed in Hong Kong on the Hang Seng index, where today it gained a further 2.7% reaching $119 in Hong Kong.
Baidu sfida ChatGpt with the Erniebot
As anticipated, the CEO of Chinese search engine giant Baidu, Robin Li, said on Friday that the company will “very soon” officially launch Ernie 3.5. This is a generative AI model, which will power Baidu’s ChatGPT-like app, Ernie Bot, and later be integrated into the search engine. As indeed Microsoft did thanks to the ChatGPT technology.
Founder and CEO Robin Li made the announcement at the Zhongguancun Forum, one of China’s most popular tech forums, about two months after the introduction of the Ernie Bot, which, according to Reuters reports, has currently received reviews contrasting.
Currently, Ernie Bot and other products powered by the company’s generative AI model remain in trial mode, and therefore accessible to a limited number of companies and users.
AI drives tech rally
Nvidia’s quarterly, released last week, made it clear for both markets and the economy: for better or for worse, that artificial intelligence is the future.
In other words almost every industry will become dependent on AI. Thinking about the self-driving car industry, healthcare robotics, the gaming industry, the world of finance, for all of them artificial intelligence has become a major factor in hindsight.
In Nvidia’s case, the advantage is already clear. The company reported for Q1, earnings per share of 1,09 dollars on a turnover of $7.19 billion, both well above Wall Street estimates. But the real boost came from next-quarter guidance, the maker of whom expects Q2 sales of $11 billion, thanks largely to its leadership in AI chip manufacturing and supply.
In a single session, the stock recorded a sensational rise of more than 26%, thus exceeding the market cap of 950 billion dollarsand getting ever closer to the exclusive club of companies with market capitalization over $1 trillion.
By comparison, the S&P 500 semiconductor index rose 11.4% following Nvidia’s quarterly announcement. While the SOX Index (Philadelphia Semiconductor Index), one of the main benchmarks, listed on the Nasdaq Composite is up by 37% year to date.
The trend is confirmed as positive for the entire tech sector with the Nasdaq Composite index up by 22%, particularly driven by Meta Platformsa (Facebook) up by 113% year to date, Alphabet (Google) +40%, again from the beginning of the year e Apple with + 35%.