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Baidu Launches ERNIE 4.5 Turbo, ERNIE X1 Turbo and New Suite of AI Tools to Empower Developers and Supercharge AI Innovation

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Following the release of two models in mid-March, Baidu unveiled ERNIE 4.5 Turbo and ERNIE X1 Turbo today, which stand out for their multimodal capabilities, strong reasoning, and low costs. ERNIE 4.5 Turbo delivers faster responses while priced at 20% of ERNIE 4.5; ERNIE X1 Turbo, featuring enhanced capabilities, is half the price of ERNIE X1.In addition to the models, Baidu also unveiled an array of AI applications, including Xinxiang, a multi-agent collaboration app, enabling full task delivery from a single sentence prompt, as well as highly convincing digital humans.Baidu also announced an AI Open Initiative as well as the integration of MCP into some existing products to enable effortless experience for the developers to access and utilize Baidu’s suite of services.

WUHAN, China, April 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU and HKEX: 9888), a leading AI company with a strong internet foundation, today introduced a new suite of AI innovations at its annual developer conference Baidu Create 2025. At the event, Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Li introduced ERNIE 4.5 Turbo and ERNIE X1 Turbo, the latest two models of the company, along with a series of AI applications and advancements, and committed to empowering developers to fully embrace MCP (Model Context Protocol).

“Our releases aim to empower developers to build the best applications — without having to worry about model capability, costs, or development tools,” Li said in his keynote, addressing an audience of over 5,000 developers and tech enthusiasts. “Without practical applications, neither advanced chips nor sophisticated models hold value. While there will be a multitude of models, it is the applications that will truly dominate in the future. Applications are where true power lies,” Li added.

ERNIE 4.5 Turbo and ERNIE X1 Turbo: Faster and Cheaper

Baidu introduced ERNIE 4.5 Turbo and ERNIE X1 Turbo at Create 2025, both of which feature enhanced multimodal capabilities, strong reasoning, low costs, and are available for users to access on ERNIE Bot now free of charge. The two models were launched to address common pain points in the industry, including single-modality, high-hallucination, slow-response and high-price, Li noted.

ERNIE X1 Turbo is an upgraded deep thinking reasoning model. Featuring a more advanced chain of thought, stronger deep thinking capabilities, and further enhanced multimodal and tool invocation abilities, it excels in Q&A, literary creation, and logical reasoning, outperforming DeepSeek R1 as well as the latest version of V3.

ERNIE X1 Turbo offers improved performance while being priced at half of ERNIE X1, making it only 25% of the price of DeepSeek R1. The input price is RMB 1 per million tokens, and the output price is RMB 4 per million tokens.

ERNIE 4.5 Turbo demonstrates overall progress in hallucination reduction, logical reasoning, and coding abilities, with faster response. The multimodal capabilities of ERNIE 4.5 Turbo are on par with GPT-4.1 and superior to GPT-4o across multiple benchmarks. For ERNIE 4.5 Turbo, the input price is only RMB 0.8 per million tokens, and the output price is RMB 3.2 per million tokens, 80% off the price of ERNIE 4.5, 0.2% of GPT-4.5 and 40% of DeepSeek V3.

Both ERNIE 4.5 Turbo and X1 Turbo have further enhanced their multimodal capabilities. “Multimodality will become a standard feature of future foundation models. The market for pure text-based models will shrink, while the market for multimodal models will continue to grow,” Li predicted in his keynote.

The two models follow the launch of ERNIE 4.5, the company’s first native multimodal foundation model, and ERNIE X1, a multimodal deep-thinking reasoning model capable of tool use, both of which received strong market recognition after their debut on March 16, 2025.

AI Application Frontrunners: Highly Convincing Digital Humans and Multi-agent Tool Xinxiang

The highly convincing digital human is one of the key applications that exemplify the capabilities of multimodality. “AI digital humans are one of the most exciting breakthrough applications in 2025,” Li said in his speech.

Li introduced Baidu’s highly convincing AI digital human, which features ultra-realistic voice and appearance, as well as more professional content-generation and more flexible interactions. Baidu’s Huiboxing, a digital human livestream platform powered by AI, now offers a feature to create a digital human in one click where users can upload a video as short as two minutes before the system can generate a personalized digital human ready to go live.

Over the past year, agents have transitioned from a niche concept to a core field of AI applications. Notably, coding agents have rapidly gained traction, with Baidu offering tools like Comate for code assistance and Miaoda, a no-code platform for multi-agent collaboration. In March, Miaoda was made available to the public, allowing users to generate applications with a single sentence.

“There are nearly 30 million programmers and 8 billion people globally. As technologies become more accessible, everyone can possess the capabilities of a programmer,” said Li.

At the event, Baidu also officially released the multi-agent collaboration app Xinxiang, a “general super agent” capable of solving complex problems for users in a one-stop manner. Currently, Xinxiang covers 200 task types in scenarios such as knowledge-analysis, travel-planning, studying, and office work. In the future, Baidu plans to expand the number of task types to over 100,000.

Li also introduced Cangzhou OS, the first content operating system jointly launched by Baidu Wenku and Baidu Drive. Powered by Cangzhou OS, Baidu Drive has launched AI Note, the industry’s first multimodal AI note-taking tool. Users can generate quick notes, mind maps, and quizzes from watching educational videos with just a single click.

To date, Baidu Wenku’s AI features have amassed 40 million paying users and 97 million monthly active users (MAUs), while Baidu Drive’s AI features serve more than 80 million MAUs.

Building a Thriving Ecosystem: AI Open Initiative, MCP and ERNIE Cup

Addressing the booming AI application market, Baidu introduced a series of initiatives aimed at supporting AI developers in adapting to the emerging trend.

Baidu Search Open Platform has launched the AI Open Initiative (sai.baidu.com), providing developers of AI agents, H5 pages, mini programs, and standalone apps with traffic and monetization opportunities, as well as access to the latest AI services through a diversified content and service distribution system.

Also at the event, Baidu announced full support to enable developers to adopt Model Context Protocol (MCP). Li compared MCP to installing a “universal socket” for AI — enabling seamless connections between external services and large models through standardized interfaces. Live demos showcased the integration of MCP across a series of Baidu proprietary services, including the Baidu Qianfan Foundation Model Platform, Baidu Search, e-commerce, and Baidu Drive.

To further support innovation in AI, Baidu announced the third ERNIE Cup Innovation Challenge at Create 2025. This year’s challenge will double the prize amounts from previous years, offering up to RMB 70 million in investment for outstanding projects.

At the same time, Baidu announced that over the next five years, the company will scale up its efforts to cultivate an additional 10 million AI talents for society.

Baidu Create is Baidu’s annual tech event for the developer community, serving as a platform for technology launches and knowledge exchange. This year’s conference centered around the theme of “Models Lead, APPs Rule” and featured six sub-forums on subjects such as MCP, agents, DeepSeek and more.

About Baidu

Founded in 2000, Baidu’s mission is to make the complicated world simpler through technology. Baidu is a leading AI company with strong internet foundation, trading on the NASDAQ under “BIDU” and HKEX under “9888.” One Baidu ADS represents eight Class A ordinary shares.

Media Contact
intlcomm@baidu.com

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SOURCE Baidu, Inc.

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SSC SECURITY SERVICES CORP. ANNOUNCES SHAREHOLDER APPROVAL OF PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED PLAN OF ARRANGEMENT

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REGINA, SK, July 22, 2026 /CNW/ — SSC Security Services Corp. (TSXV: SECU) (US: SECUF) (“SSC” or the “Company”) today announced the voting results from its special meeting of holders (the “Shareholders”) of common shares (the “Shares”) of the Company held today (the “Meeting”) in connection with the previously announced plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act, 2021 (Saskatchewan) (the “Arrangement”), pursuant to which Universal Protection Service, LP (the “Parent”), through its wholly-owned subsidiary, 102236724 Saskatchewan Ltd. (the “Purchaser”, and together with the Parent, “Allied Universal”), will acquire all of the issued and outstanding Shares for $4.4075 per Share in cash, and pursuant to which certain officers and directors of the Company (the “Management Purchasers”) will purchase the Company’s legacy assets and cyber security business in a management buy-out transaction (the “MBO” and collectively with the Arrangement, the “Transaction”).

The Arrangement requires (i) the approval of 66 2/3% of the votes cast by Shareholders (including the Management Purchasers) present or represented by proxy and entitled to vote at the Meeting and (ii) the approval of a simple majority (more than 50%) of the votes cast by Shareholders present or represented by proxy and entitled to vote at the Meeting, other than the Management Purchasers and any other person required to be excluded from such vote for the purpose of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 – Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions (the “Minority Shareholders”). At the Meeting, the resolution approving the Arrangement was approved by (i) 99.99% of the votes cast by Shareholders, and (ii) 99.97% of the votes cast by the Minority Shareholders.

Remaining Conditions to Completion of the Arrangement

Completion of the Transaction remains subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain closing conditions that are set out in the arrangement agreement entered into between the Company and Allied Universal on May 26, 2026 (the “Arrangement Agreement”), including receipt of final court approval and approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. SSC intends to seek a final order (the “Final Order”) of the Court of King’s Bench for Saskatchewan to approve the Arrangement at a hearing to be held on July 27, 2026.

Subject to obtaining the Final Order and the satisfaction or waiver of the remaining conditions in the Arrangement Agreement, the Transaction is anticipated to close on July 31, 2026.

About SSC

SSC Security Services Corp. is Canada’s largest publicly traded security company. SSC acts as a public holding company investing in physical, electronic and cyber security businesses. The Company has one wholly-owned operating subsidiary: Logixx Security Inc., which provides physical, electronic and cyber security services to primarily commercial, industrial and public sector clients. The Company’s clients include federal and provincial governments, Crown corporations, and many high-profile corporate and public sector clients such as hospitals, airports, utility companies and police forces.

Forward Looking Statements

This release includes forward-looking statements concerning the future results, future performance, intentions, objectives, plans and expectations of the Company. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as “plans”, “expects”, “is expected”, “estimates”, “intends”, “anticipates”, “believes” or variations of such words and phrases (including negative and grammatical variations) or state that certain actions, events or results “may”, “could”, “would”, “might” or “will” be taken, occur or be achieved. The forward-looking events and circumstances discussed in this release may not occur and could differ materially as a result of known and unknown risks, uncertainties affecting SSC, including risks regarding economic factors and the equity markets generally and many other factors beyond the control of SSC. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, this release contains forward-looking statements pertaining to: the anticipated timing of the Transaction; receipt of required court and stock exchange approvals; satisfaction of closing conditions; and the anticipated effective date of the Arrangement. Risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially include: failure to obtain court or stock exchange approvals; failure to satisfy closing conditions; failure of the parties to complete the Transaction for any reason, including termination of the Arrangement Agreement; legal challenges to the Arrangement; and risks and uncertainties discussed in SSC’s disclosure documents filed on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the views of SSC as of any date after the date of this Release. Although SSC has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this Release are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements included in this Release are made as of the date of this Release and SSC does not undertake to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect new information, subsequent events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE SSC Security Services Corp.

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GMI Cloud Announces Strategic Compute Collaboration With NVIDIA

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The collaboration advances GMI Cloud’s selective partnership strategy and supports its next phase of AI infrastructure growth

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — GMI Cloud, a leading AI-native cloud provider delivering high-performance GPU infrastructure and inference services, today announced a strategic collaboration with NVIDIA as part of its selective approach to building long-term compute partnerships.

In support of this strategy, GMI Cloud has committed $500 million in CapEx to expand its compute capabilities and serve growing customer demand. The commitment represents a significant investment in the company’s next phase of infrastructure development.

GMI Cloud has also secured nine-figure contracts with a leading U.S. frontier AI enterprise, providing a strong commercial foundation for its continued growth.

GMI Cloud is pursuing a selective partnership model centered on a limited number of strategic relationships. The collaboration builds on GMI Cloud’s continued partnership with NVIDIA and brings together long-term compute planning with contracted customer demand.

GMI Cloud is among the earliest cloud providers to adopt this new compute partnership model, marking an important step in the company’s expansion and partnership strategy.

The $500 million CapEx commitment, nine-figure customer contracts, and selective partnership strategy establish the foundation for GMI Cloud’s next stage of growth. The company is set to continue this trajectory as it expands its compute capabilities and supports the evolving needs of frontier AI customers. For more information, visit www.gmicloud.ai.

About GMI Cloud
GMI Cloud is an AI-native cloud infrastructure company powering the next generation of AI applications. The company provides high-performance GPU infrastructure, Model-as-a-Service, dedicated endpoints, and AI workload deployment solutions for developers and enterprises building production AI systems. GMI Cloud helps teams move from experimentation to production with scalable compute, flexible infrastructure, and an ecosystem built for modern AI builders. For more information visit gmicloud.ai.

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SOURCE GMI Cloud

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ROKFORM Launches Rugged Case for Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 and Z Fold8 Ultra

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Complete foldable protection with six-foot drop rating, MAGMAX ™ magnetic grip, and RokLock ® twist-lock mounting

IRVINE, Calif., July 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — ROKFORM today launched its Rugged Case for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 and Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra. Built with a slim, two-piece shell design — not just a backplate — the Rugged Case delivers six-foot drop protection, full hinge coverage, and secure RokLock® mounting across both foldable models.

“Users get the full ROKFORM experience with the Rugged Case, including incredible drop protection, RokLock® mounting, and MAGMAX™ magnetic strength, all in a design built specifically around the unique needs of a foldable device,” said Jeff Whitten, ROKFORM CEO.

The two-piece shell locks together to protect the outer screen, back, and spine of the Galaxy Z Fold8. In addition, the case is engineered to guard one of the most critical and vulnerable components on foldable phones — the hinge — from drops and impacts with full hinge coverage. The case exceeds military-grade drop protection standards from six feet, with a dual-layer build and reinforced corners designed to absorb real-world impact.

ROKFORM’s patented RokLock® twist-lock system delivers rock-solid, wobble-free connection to ROKFORM’s full ecosystem of car, bike, and motorcycle mounts. Combined with MAGMAX™ magnets, which deliver 3x more holding strength over standard MagSafe® magnets, users get an ultra-secure magnetic grip for mounting and use with other accessories.

The case is compatible with ROKFORM wireless chargers and compatible wireless charging accessories.

The Rugged Case for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 and Z Fold8 Ultra retails for $79.99 and will be available August 5, 2026 at rokform.com.

About ROKFORM:
Founded in 2010, ROKFORM’s small but dedicated team has bootstrapped its way to becoming a leader in the design and manufacturing of innovative consumer electronics products. It is based in Irvine, California. With nearly 20 patents, ROKFORM remains a leader in the premium active lifestyle consumer electronics niche, with innovative designs to protect and enhance the world’s mobile devices. Products are designed and shipped directly from California headquarters, and customers can visit ROKFORM’s showroom to experience them. Learn more at rokform.com.

Contact:
Haley Lush
775-204-7975
419258@email4pr.com

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SOURCE ROKFORM

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