Baidu delivers new LLMs ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1 undercutting DeepSeek, OpenAI on cost — but they’re not open source (yet)

During the weekend, the Chinese search giant BAIDU announced the launch of new models of artificial intelligence, Ernie 4.5 and Ernie X1, a multimedia language model and thinking model, respectively.

BAIDU claims that they perform on the latest model on a variety of standards, and it has become the best V3 of Deepseek and Openai’s GPT-4.5 (how do you like the close name that also match Baidu? GSM8K

It also claims that it undermines the cost of both Deepseke’s Deepseek’s Deepseek’s Deepseek with Ernie X1 by 50 % and Ai Juggernaut Openai GPT-4.5 with Ernie 4.5 by 99 %, respectively.

However, both of them have some important restrictions, including the lack of licensing open sources in the previous case (provided by Deepseek R1) and a much reduced context compared to the latter (8000 symbols instead of 128,000, frankly, an amazing amount of this age of the windows of the context of more than a million people.

As I noticed X User Claudeglass in a post, a small context window makes it suitable only for Chatbots customer service.

Baidu posted on X that she was planning to make the open source the Ernie 4.5 family on June 30, 2025.

BAIDU enabled access to the models through the API interface (API) and Chatbot competition in Chinese chat, known as “Ernie Bot”-it answers questions, creates the text, produces creative writing, interacts with users-has made Ernie BOT free to reach.

Erney 4.5: A new generation of multimedia intelligence

Ernie 4.5 is the latest BAIDU foundation, which was designed as an original multimedia system capable of processing and understanding texts, photos, sound and video, and is a clear competitor to the GPT-4.5 model of Openai that was released in February 2025.

The model has been improved to improve understanding, obstetrics, thinking and memory. Improvements include improving hallucinations, logical thinking, and coding capabilities.

According to Baidu, Ernie 4.5 excels over GPT-4.5 in multiple standards while maintaining a much lower cost.

The developments of the model stem from many major technologies, including the conviction of dynamic attention, the mixture of heterogeneous multimedia, and the decline in self -columns after training.

Ernie X1 offers advanced deep thinking capabilities, emphasizing understanding, planning, meditation and development.

Unlike the multimedia standard intelligence models, Ernie X1 is specially designed to make complex benefit and use tools, allowing them to perform tasks such as advanced search, Q&A documents, interpretation of AI’s generated images, implementing software instructions, and web page analysis.

The model supports a set of tools, including the academic research for Baidu, search for business information, and concession research tools. Its development depends on progressive progressive learning, comprehensive training that merges thought and work chains, and a multi -faceted unified bonus system.

Access and availability

Users can now access both Ernie 4.5 and Ernie X1 via the official Ernie BOT website.

For institutions and developers, Ernie 4.5 is now available through the Baidu Ai Cloud platform via API Access. Ernie X1 is expected to be soon available.

API arrival pricing:

• Erney 4.5:
  • Inputs: 0.55 USD per million symbols
  • Exit: $ 2.2 per 1m symbols
• Erney x1:
  • Input: 0.28 dollars per 1m symbols
  • Directing: $ 1.1 per 1m symbols

Compare that with:

• Deepsek R1
  • Input: 0.55 dollars per 1m symbols
  • Directing: $ 2.19 per 1m symbols

Baidu has also announced plans to integrate Ernie 4.5 and Ernie X1 into its broader ecosystem, including Baidu Search and Wenxiaoyan.

Consonses decision makers for institutions

For CIOS, CTOS, IT leaders, Devops, the launch of Ernie 4.5 and Ernie X1 offer opportunities and considerations:

• Performance for cost With prices much lower than competing models, institutions that evaluate artificial intelligence solutions may see costs of costs by integrating ERNIE models via API. However, it may be necessary to conduct more measurement and tests in the real world for performance evaluation of specific business applications.
• Multimedia capabilities and thinking The ability to address and understand texts, pictures, sound and videos can be valuable for companies in industries such as customer support, content generation, legal technology and financing.
• The integration of the tool Ernie X1 can work with tools such as advanced research, questions and answers based on documents, and interpretation of software instructions for automation and efficiency gains in institutions environments.
• Environmental system and Emiratisation Given that the artificial intelligence models in Baidu have been improved to address the Chinese language and regional knowledge, institutions operating in China or targeting Chinese -speaking markets may find Ernie models more effective than global alternatives.
• License and data privacy -While Baidu indicated that the GPT-4.5 open source will be placed later this summer, June 30, 2025, this is still three months away, so companies should at least wait until that time to assess whether it is worth publishing local cloud services or on cloud services hosting the United States. Foundation users must review the Baidu policies regarding data privacy, compliance and use of models before combining these artificial intelligence solutions.

Expansion of artificial intelligence and future expectations

While the development of artificial intelligence is accelerating in 2025, Baidu puts himself as a leader in multimedia intelligence techniques based on thinking.

The company plans to continue investing in artificial intelligence, data centers and cloud infrastructure to enhance its foundation capabilities.

By providing a group of strong performance and reducing costs, the latest Model International in Baidu aims to provide individual companies and users with advanced artificial intelligence tools.

For more details, please visit the official Ernie Bot website.