Kunlunxin
| Kunlunxin | |
Native name | 昆仑芯（北京）科技有限公司 |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
| Industry | Semiconductors |
| Founded | April 2021 |
| Headquarters | Beijing, China |
Key people | Ouyang Jian (CEO) |
| Parent | Baidu |
| Website | www |
Kunlunxin (Beijing) Technology Co Ltd (Kunlunxin; Chinese: 昆仑芯; pinyin: Kūnlúnxīn) is the semiconductor subsidiary of Baidu.
History
Baidu started developing its own chips back in 2011.[1][2][3]
In April 2021, the chip project was spun out as a separate entity called Kunlunxin with Baidu's chief chip architect becoming its CEO. Baidu remains as its largest shareholder.[3]
Product history
In 2011, Baidu started work on the Kunlun AI chip project. Initially, Baidu researched and emulated its many-small-core XPU microarchitecture using FPGAs, but in 2018 finally built a dedicated silicon that was built using one of Samsung Foundry's 14 nm process.[1] In July 2018, Baidu unveiled the Kunlun AI chip to the public marking its debut. The new design was 30 times faster than the original FPGA-based processor.[4] The chip was deployed in Baidu's search engine.[3]
In August 2021, Kunlunxin unveiled the Kunlun II AI Chip which was comparable to the Nvidia A100.[1] It was introduced to the Ernie Bot deep learning model as well in Baidu robotaxi and Apolong.[3]
In April 2025, at its developer conference, Baidu unveiled a 30,000-chip cluster powered by its third-generation P800 Kunlun chips. Baidu pitched the system as capable of training "DeepSeek-like" models with hundreds of billions of parameters.[5] They would be used to handle the vast majority of the Baidu's inference tasks.[3]
In August 2025, Baidu's AI servers powered by Kunlun chips won the bidding for a centralized procurement project held by China Mobile.[3]
In November 2025, Baidu stated it would release the Kunlun M100 chip in 2026 and the Kunlun M300 chip in 2027.[3][6]
In December 2025, Kunlunxin reached a valuation of almost US$3 billion. It was reported that there were plans for an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.[7]
See also
References
- ^ a b c Shilov, Anton (18 August 2021). "Baidu Unveils Kunlun II AI Chip: Rival for Nvidia A100". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 1 December 2025.
- ^ Huang, Annie (21 March 2023). "Baidu's Kunlun Xin not only focuses on AI, but also eyes self-driving". DigiTimes. Retrieved 1 December 2025.
- ^ a b c d e f g Liu, Jia (13 November 2025). "Baidu to Launch Next-Gen AI Chip Next Year, Plans More Powerful M300 for 2027, Senior Exec Says". Yicai Global. Retrieved 1 December 2025.
- ^ Sun, Yiting (4 July 2018). "'China's Google' releases its first AI chip". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 1 December 2025.
- ^ Pan, Che (25 April 2025). "China's Baidu says its Kunlun chip cluster can train DeepSeek-like models". Reuters.
- ^ Jiang, Ben (13 November 2025). "Baidu unveils AI chips to boost China's self-sufficiency drive". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 1 December 2025.
- ^ "Exclusive: Baidu's Kunlunxin, valued at close to $3 billion, eyes Hong Kong IPO, sources say". Reuters. 5 December 2025.