Baidu's ERNIE X1.1 Model Revolutionizes AI with Enhanced Capabilities

Baidu Unveils ERNIE X1.1: A Leap Forward in AI Technology

On September 9, 2025, at the WAVE SUMMIT 2025, Baidu introduced its highly anticipated reasoning model, ERNIE X1.1. This latest innovation is part of a broader commitment to advance artificial intelligence, particularly in terms of usability and functionality. The improvements in this model are significant, particularly in areas such as factuality, instruction-following ability, and agentic capabilities, marking a notable leap from its predecessor, ERNIE X1.

Major Improvements in Core Capabilities

The ERNIE X1.1 model boasts an increase of 34.8% in factuality, a 12.5% enhancement in instruction adherence, and a 9.6% boost in agentic capabilities. Such metrics place the model in a competitive standing, surpassing the DeepSeek R1-0528 while maintaining performance similar to top-tier systems like GPT-5 and Gemini 2.5 Pro. This is achieved through an innovative framework that combines reinforcement learning with self-distillation techniques.

Expanding Accessibility

Baidu has made ERNIE X1.1 accessible via multiple platforms, including the ERNIE Bot website and the Wenxiaoyan app, broadening opportunities for developers and enterprises. Additionally, this model is integrated within Baidu's AI Cloud services, making it available to clients who require advanced AI capabilities.

Upgrades to PaddlePaddle Framework

In conjunction with ERNIE X1.1, Baidu launched PaddlePaddle framework version 3.2 during the summit. This update addresses critical limitations in model training and deployment. Key improvements include computational optimization, enhanced hardware integration, and native fault tolerance.

Baidu highlighted that through the combination of these updates, PaddlePaddle can now achieve remarkable efficiency, with a pre-training model fit utilization (MFU) at 47%, particularly with its ERNIE-4.5-300B-A47B model. The ecosystem itself has seen expansive growth, serving over 23 million developers and 760,000 enterprises.

Enhancements in Baidu Comate

Another impressive introduction at the event was the Baidu Comate 3.5S, a next-generation AI coding assistant designed to improve coding productivity drastically. The new version significantly augments multi-agent collaboration, empowering individual developers with the capabilities typically associated with entire teams.

This effectively means that tasks can be broken down and assigned to various AI agents, facilitating teamwork without the need for direct human management. Baidu Comate has already supported over 10 million developers, and within the company, 45% of codings are now driven by AI technology.

Open-Sourcing ERNIE-4.5-21B-A3B-Thinking Model

Baidu's commitment to open-source development continues with the announcement of the ERNIE-4.5-21B-A3B-Thinking model, tailored for complex reasoning tasks requiring extensive context comprehension. It features a context window of 128K and delivers exceptional performance in diverse functions including content generation, logical reasoning, and mathematical calculations.

Distinct from more substantial models, ERNIE-4.5-21B-A3B-Thinking is a lightweight mixture-of-experts (MoE) model. With a total of 21 billion parameters and only 3 billion active parameters, it presents near-state-of-the-art performance without the resource demands of larger systems. Available on Hugging Face and Baidu AI Studio, it complements Baidu's ongoing initiative to foster a broader AI development community.

Conclusion

Baidu's unveiling of the ERNIE X1.1 and its associated advancements represent a pivotal moment in the pursuit of artificial intelligence technologies. By enhancing core capabilities and making extensive tools available to developers, Baidu is not only setting new benchmarks for AI but also democratizing access to powerful technologies that can transform various industries.

With these innovations, Baidu continues affirming its mission to simplify complexities through technology, reinforcing its position as a leading AI enterprise on the global stage.