Baidu is planning to increase investments in new infrastructure for the smart economy of the future. As part of its efforts to construct new infrastructure, Baidu aims to have 5 million intelligent cloud servers by 2030 and train 5 million AI professionals within 5 years.
New infrastructure for emerging technologies
These investments will help facilitate the widespread application of AI in transportation, city management, finance, energy, health care, and manufacturing to eventually achieve industrial intelligence.
Baidu Chief Technology Officer Haifeng Wang, underscoring the importance of the plan, said,
“New infrastructure–which encompasses emerging technologies like AI, cloud computing, 5G, IoT, and blockchain–will be the driver for China’s economic development in the coming decades. As a world-leading AI platform company, Baidu is well-positioned to make large contributions to the development of new infrastructure in China, which will support the implementation of AI applications in different industries.”
Baidu also plans to train 5 million AI professionals in the next five years. According to Baidu’s announcement, the company has been working with more than 200 leading universities in China to develop courses related to AI and deep learning and has already trained more than 1 million AI experts. In addition to this, Baidu has more than 7,000 published AI patent applications in China. Baidu Cloud is one of China’s leaders in the public cloud and AI cloud services with more than ten data centers across the country.