Core Insights - Baidu plans to launch a new inference model by the end of August 2025 to handle more complex tasks and compete with companies like DeepSeek and OpenAI [1] - The company is set to release an updated version of its core foundational model, named Ernie 5.0, in the coming months [1] - Baidu's Ernie 4.5, released in March, is touted as the "strongest" model, featuring significant improvements in multimodal understanding, text, and logical reasoning, outperforming GPT-4.5 in several tests while offering API call prices at only 1% of GPT-4.5 [1] - The Ernie X1 model is designed to compete with DeepSeek-R1, supporting multimodal and multi-tool capabilities, with API call prices approximately half that of R1 [1]