Baidu Leads Lunar New Year AI User Grab with CNY500m Ernie Campaign

Lunar Festival Sparks an AI User Grab in China

Baidu's Ernie Campaign Aims for Mass Users

Baidu is allocating about CNY500 million to push its Ernie large‑language model into mass use during the Lunar New Year period, joining a wider industry blitz to win consumers and developers. The spending backs promotions and increased availability of Ernie‑powered services at a moment when the holiday drives peak online engagement, and rivals are offering heavy incentives to accelerate trial and adoption. Baidu frames the campaign as a race to embed Ernie in everyday apps and services so users begin relying on its capabilities before competitors can establish entrenched ecosystems.

The company is coupling marketing with product access to attract both casual users and third‑party developers building on Ernie, seeking to lock in habitual use and integrations that are hard for rivals to displace. By directing resources at the holiday — traditionally a high‑spending, high‑attention period — Baidu aims to grow real‑world usage metrics that feed model improvement and developer interest. The push underscores a strategic shift from model research alone to commercialisation through scale and platform effects.

Analysts caution that such aggressive user‑acquisition spending raises questions about long‑term sustainability, but note the immediate objective is ecosystem capture rather than near‑term profitability. Baidu’s move sits amid a peaking competitive window where firms attempt to set standards for developer tools, data flows and consumer interfaces. The company’s Ernie drive reflects a bet that leadership in user engagement and integrations will determine which Chinese AI platforms dominate the next phase of AI adoption.

Competitors’ Holiday Gambits

Other Chinese tech groups are mounting bigger fiscal bets: Alibaba commits roughly CNY3 billion to promote Qwen, Tencent allocates about CNY1 billion for Yuanbao, and ByteDance runs promotions tied to its Doubao model including large televised giveaways. Firms hand out red envelopes, vouchers and gadgets to accelerate sign‑ups and usage, with some reporting service strain as demand spikes.

Model Development and Global Funding

Alongside marketing, firms and startups continue to upgrade models — ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0, Zhipu AI’s GLM‑5 and Shanghai MiniMax’s M2.5 join expected launches from DeepSeek and Alibaba — while global funding flows into AI startups, underscoring that cash is still fueling rapid expansion even as questions about viable long‑term business models persist.