Chinese AI giant Baidu has released an updated version of its flagship AI model, ERNIE-5.0, which has demonstrated impressive results in various tests.
🚨 BREAKING: @Baidu_inc’s ERNIE-5.0-0110 has just delivered impressive results on LMArena. It’s not a test run or preview.
In the latest rankings, the model scored 1460 on the text benchmark, placing it first among Chinese models and within the global top 10—the only Chinese… pic.twitter.com/9iBVzDcqgq
— Doreen (@dee_naliaks) January 15, 2026
ERNIE-5.0-0110 scored 1460 points in the LMArena Text rankings, securing eighth place globally and becoming the only Chinese model in the top 10. It surpassed OpenAI’s GPT-5.1-High and Google’s Gemini-2.5-Pro.
Source: lmarena.
The neural network also ranked second in mathematical reasoning, trailing only GPT-5.2-High.
The Chinese model’s superiority over most publicly available Western systems in complex logical tasks marks a significant narrowing of the AI capability gap.
ERNIE-5.0-0110 also demonstrated competitive performance in creative writing, instruction following, and programming.
The underlying LLM architecture, Mixture-of-Experts with 2 trillion parameters, aligns with China’s focus on efficiency. This design reduces computation per query compared to dense systems.
Other Chinese Achievements
Besides Baidu, other tech companies in the country boast achievements in AI.
Alibaba released an update to its flagship AI app, Qwen, integrating it more deeply into the firm’s extensive ecosystem, including online shopping and hotel bookings.
The release coincided with reaching 100 million monthly active users (MAU). In November 2025, Qwen became the fastest-growing app among all AI solutions globally, with MAU increasing by 149%.
The solution now coordinates Alibaba’s vast ecosystem, allowing users to perform various tasks—from e-commerce and food delivery to taxi bookings, reservations, and purchasing cinema tickets—all via voice commands.
Meanwhile, in December, the Chinese generative AI service Kling AI reported sales exceeding $20 million. The commercial progress is driven by continuous product improvement.
Kling AI is China’s counterpart to OpenAI’s Sora. The neural network generates realistic videos from prompts or images.
China Closing In
China’s AI models lag behind US capabilities by only “a few months,” stated Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.
The assessment from the head of one of the leading AI labs contradicts the view that China is significantly behind.
He believes that China is “closer to the capabilities of the US and the West than was thought a year or two ago.”
However, the country’s companies still need to prove their ability to make breakthroughs, the expert suggests.
“The question is, can they create something new that goes beyond existing boundaries?” Hassabis noted.
Chinese tech companies face several challenges. One of the most serious is access to critical technologies. The US has a ban on the sale of advanced semiconductors from Nvidia, which are necessary for training AI models.
In January, the administration of US President Donald Trump officially permitted the sale of Nvidia’s second most powerful AI chips, the H200, to China. However, the Chinese government has now informed some tech companies that it will approve chip purchases only in special cases, such as for university research.
Domestic manufacturers like Huawei are trying to fill the gap, but their products lag behind Nvidia in performance.
Back in December 2025, Trump announced that Nvidia would be allowed to sell H200 AI chips to “approved clients” in China and other countries, provided the US receives 25% of the profits.