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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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Sapient Insights Group Reveals the HR Technology Solutions Ranking Highest in Vendor Satisfaction and User Experience for 2026

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October 21, 2026

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Voice of the Customer badges awarded across 23 HR technology categories, based on 10,000 responses to Sapient’s 2026-2027 Annual HR Systems Survey

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Sapient Insights Group today revealed the HR technology solutions ranking highest in vendor satisfaction and user experience in its 2026-2027 HR Systems Survey, now in its 29th year. This year Sapient awarded 630 Voice of the Customer badges across 23 technology categories and three company sizes. The rankings are based on responses from HR professionals representing 6,038 organizations.

Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer and Managing Partner at Sapient Insights Group, presents the HR technology solutions ranking highest in vendor satisfaction and user experience for 2026.

To help buyers find the providers that fit their organization, the rankings are split into three company sizes: small, mid-sized, and enterprise. Respondents rate their satisfaction with their current solution in each technology category on a scale of 1 to 5, with attention to support and service. Sapient also ranks solutions on user experience. The top five solutions in each category and size earn a badge for vendor satisfaction and a badge for user experience. Three categories with smaller sample sizes (Time Labor Budgeting, Contingent Workforce Management, and Skills Management) are ranked in aggregate across all company sizes.

The survey continues to grow with the HR technology market. New this year, the survey adds Compliance Management to the HR Blueprint, application-level outcome questions, payment models for applications and AI, and finance applications covering Core, Expense, and Planning. It also asks more “why” questions throughout, so the results show not just what organizations are doing but the reasons behind their choices.

“Our Voice of the Customer rankings come straight from HR practitioners, with no sponsorship involved, which is why buyers and vendors both pay attention to them,” said Stacey Harris, chief research officer and managing partner at Sapient Insights Group. “This year we expanded the rankings to cover more of the HR technology landscape, which gives buyers a clearer view of how solutions perform for the specific work they need done, not just at the suite level. It also gives vendors honest feedback from the people who use their products every day.”

The highest-ranking solutions for vendor satisfaction are listed below. Rankings include point solutions, modules within technology suites, and in some cases service providers.

Payroll
Dayforce – Enterprise
isolved – Mid-sized
BambooHR – Small

HR Management
Dayforce – Enterprise
HiBob – Mid-sized
BambooHR – Small

Benefits
Businessolver – Enterprise
Fidelity NetBenefits/PSW – Mid-sized
HiBob – Small

HR Service Delivery: Portal
Dovetail – Enterprise
Workday Help – Mid-sized
isolved – Small

HR Service Delivery: Content Management
Dovetail – Enterprise
DocuSign – Mid-sized
isolved – Small

HR Service Delivery: Employee Help Desk
Dovetail – Enterprise
ServiceNow – Mid-sized
isolved – Small

HR Service Delivery: Engagement Survey
Dovetail – Enterprise
isolved – Mid-sized
BambooHR – Small

Time and Attendance
Darwinbox – Enterprise
isolved – Mid-sized
isolved – Small

Absence Management
Darwinbox – Enterprise
isolved – Mid-sized
BambooHR – Small

Leave Management
Darwinbox – Enterprise
isolved – Mid-sized
isolved – Small

Workforce Scheduling
Darwinbox – Enterprise
isolved – Mid-sized
isolved – Small

Labor Budgeting
isolved – All sizes

Learning
Cornerstone – Enterprise
OpenSesame – Mid-sized
isolved – Small

Recruiting
Indeed – Enterprise
Greenhouse – Mid-sized
BambooHR – Small

Onboarding
Dayforce – Enterprise
isolved (ApplicantPro) – Mid-sized
BambooHR – Small

Performance
Dayforce – Enterprise
HiBob – Mid-sized
BambooHR – Small

Compensation
Dayforce – Enterprise
Payscale Payfactors – Mid-sized
Insperity – Small

Succession
Dayforce – Enterprise
Microsoft Glint – Mid-sized
Paylocity – Small

Rewards and Recognition
Awardco – Enterprise
isolved – Mid-sized
Gifted – Small

Analytics
Visier – Enterprise
Visier – Mid-sized
UKG People Analytics – Small

AI/ML
Visier Vee – Enterprise
Grammarly – Mid-sized
Anthropic Claude – Small

Contingent Workforce Management
ServiceNow – All sizes

Skills Management HiBob – All sizes

The complete Voice of the Customer results, including the top five solutions for vendor satisfaction and user experience in every category and company size, are available here (https://sapientinsights.com/top-vendors/).

Sapient Insights Group will publish detailed survey findings and analysis in its annual HR Systems Research Report on November 6, 2026. The report will be available to purchase here (https://sapientinsights.com/shop/).

About the 2026-2027 HR Systems Survey

Now in its 29th year, Sapient’s HR Systems Survey is the longest-running, most comprehensive survey of the HR technology landscape, and the only fully objective, non-sponsored study of its kind. This year, HR professionals representing 6,038 organizations around the globe took part. The survey now covers 23 technology categories. The annual report includes an in-depth look at each category, along with current and future adoption rates, customer retention, replacement plans, and projected vendor growth.

For more information about the survey and report, schedule a call (https://calendly.com/summerorellano/schedule-a-call-with-sapient-insights-group).

About Sapient Insights Group Sapient Insights Group is a certified women-owned, privately-owned consulting, research, and advisory firm. The company works with organizations in the areas of HR and finance technology; HR strategy and transformation; leadership and culture; change management; talent management; mergers and acquisitions; and project management. The company’s HR Systems Survey is the HR profession’s most trusted source for objective data on the HR technology market and insights to guide buyer investments and vendor product development and marketing. For more information, visit www.sapientinsights.com.

Media Contact

Allison Williams, Sapient Insights Group, 1 4043044748, Info@sapientinsights.com, https://sapientinsights.com/

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SOURCE Sapient Insights Group

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SAJ Debuts First CEC-Approved Systems under Australia’s New Battery Standard at All Energy 2026

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October 21, 2026

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EK70 HS5 and EK90 HS5 on show at Stand M143, with Australia’s Strongest Man at Stand E01 and the SAJ range across three distributor stands

MELBOURNE, Australia, Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — SAJ will exhibit at All Energy Australia 2026 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on 28–29 October. At Stand M143, installers can get their first hands-on look at the EK70 HS5 and EK90 HS5, the first products approved under Australia’s new SA TS 5398 standard.

At 2pm on Wednesday 28 October, DEKRA and CCS will present SAJ with the CEC certificates for the EK70 HS5 and EK90 HS5 on the stand, making SAJ the first brand listed under SA TS 5398. SAJ and DEKRA will also sign a strategic cooperation agreement covering safety, quality and compliance.

On the stand

EK70 HS5 – the all-in-one home energy system, combining hybrid inverter, LFP battery and whole-home backup in one unit. Modular 6, 7 and 9 kWh battery blocks stack to suit the household.EK90 HS5 – the premium tier, with 12,000-cycle cells, nine-layer safety protection, edge AI and a 15-year warranty.B2S and H2 – modular storage and the latest from SAJ’s residential range.elekeeper 5.0 – SAJ’s energy management app, with AI-assisted design, five-minute app commissioning and remote diagnosis.C&I – SAJ’s latest commercial and industrial solutions.

Live demonstrations of the EK70 HS5 and EK90 HS5, elekeeper 5.0 and the C&I range run at 10am on both days and again at 3pm on Wednesday.

Visitors can also play the claw machine on the stand throughout both days to win tennis balls signed by SAJ brand ambassador Alex de Minaur.

Beat Australia’s Strongest Man of 2026 at Stand E01

At Stand E01, near the hall entrance, visitors can take on Bradman Houston, Australia’s Strongest Man 2026, on the high striker. Bradman will be there each day. Anyone who beats his score wins!

Bradman recently partnered with SAJ and Sydney Solar & Electrical on a video series about lifting technique and fitness for solar installers, now on SAJ’s Instagram.

SAJ across the floor

The SAJ range is also on show with the company’s three national distribution partners, for stock, pricing and account conversations:

One Stop Warehouse – Stand EE113, with the EK90 HS5 on displaySupply Partners – Stand L135Tradezone – Stand S113

“All Energy is where the industry sees what’s next, and for SAJ that’s the EK70 HS5 and EK90 HS5,” said Alan Li, the Sales Director of SAJ Electric Australia. “Installers told us they want one integrated system that’s faster to install and that they can stand behind. Being the first brand listed under SA TS 5398 is the proof. We’d love installers to see both systems up close at Stand M143, and to try their luck against Bradman at E01 while they’re there.”

Visit SAJ

Where: Stand M143 (Beat the Strongest Man at Stand E01), Melbourne Convention and Exhibition CentreWhen: Wednesday 28 – Thursday 29 October 2026More information: au.saj-electric.com

About SAJ

Founded in Guangzhou in 2005, SAJ (Guangzhou Sanjing Electric Co., Ltd.) is a specialist in smart energy storage, delivering integrated solutions across solar generation, battery storage, energy management and EV charging for residential and commercial customers. SAJ has operated in Australia since 2013 and works with three national distribution partners – One Stop Warehouse, Supply Partners and Tradezone – backed by local technical support and warranty infrastructure.

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SOURCE SAJ

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Starvia Automotive Expands Used-Car Exports to Afghanistan and Iran

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October 21, 2026

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GUANGZHOU, China, Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Starvia Automotive has added Afghanistan and Iran to the destinations covered by its used-car export business, the company said on Oct. 21, as it focuses on used vehicles built to Chinese-market specifications. Buyers in both markets can now request an assessment of a specific vehicle before an order is confirmed.

What the review covers

For a used vehicle, the model name alone does not determine whether an export order can proceed. Year of manufacture, vehicle identity, condition, ownership documents and destination import rules are reviewed for each request, together with carrier acceptance, transit requirements and payment restrictions, according to the company.

Starvia cited two listings in its online used-car catalog as examples of the process: a 2023 Volkswagen Polo and a 2021 Volkswagen Tharu. The company said the listings show published stock and do not confirm that either unit is available or eligible for import into both markets. Stock, vehicle records and destination suitability are confirmed before a model is presented as an order option.

How an inquiry is handled

Inquiries are submitted through the company’s online form, which asks for destination city, importer details, preferred vehicle, quantity and purchasing timeframe. Starvia said the information is used to identify suitable vehicles, check documentation and seek a transport option, and that alternatives can be discussed if the first model does not meet the requirements.

An Arabic-language version of the site is available at https://www.starviaauto.com/ar?utm_source=prnews for buyers who prefer Arabic.

Any vehicle offer, freight estimate or shipment timing remains subject to commercial, regulatory and logistics checks, the company said. Buyers should obtain destination-side import approval before committing to a purchase.

About Starvia Automotive

Starvia Automotive is a Guangzhou-based exporter of new and used vehicles. Its online catalog lists used cars with vehicle history and inspection information for buyers in multiple regions.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/starvia-automotive-expands-used-car-exports-to-afghanistan-and-iran-302915298.html

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