Baidu shares expected to witness sustained rise after launch of ChatGPT rival Ernie bot

livemint.com:

ChatGPT alternative Ernie bot last week, reigniting a rally that has increased the company's valuation by $23 billion from last year. Baidu along with other Chinese companies like SenseTime, Baichuan Intelligent Technology, Zhipu AI, and MiniMax had launched their AI chatbot in China after securing regulatory approval for mass release.

Ernie bot went on to garner over 1 million users and went on top of China's app rankings, reported Bloomberg. Baidu CEO Robin Li later said at an industry event that 70 artificial intelligence language models with over 1 billion parameters have been released in China.

He also noted that Ernie 3.5 has double the processing speed of the previous version while having a 50 percent improved efficiency. Li also hinted at the launch of a newer version of Ernie bot in the future.

Boris Van, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co said, “For Baidu, this is undoubtedly a positive surprise, with market participants and businesses all expecting approvals to come at a later date," JPMorgan chase & Co.

is expecting an overall sentiment lift for Chinese internet stocks owing to the registration of AI-generated content services. JPMorgan analysts wrote, “We believe Baidu is currently the best investment proxy to China’s AIGC development," According to Bloomberg, Baidu's American depositary receipts continue to be down for more than 10 percent from the highs of February but the call option volume rose in the US on Thursday after the launch announcement of Ernie bot.