In a significant development for the burgeoning artificial intelligence landscape, a recent report by IDC, a leading market research and consulting firm, has placed Baidu’s Ernie (Wenxin) large language model (LLM) at the forefront of the Chinese market. The “China Foundation Model Product Comprehensive Evaluation Report, 2025” awarded Ernie the highest score in seven out of eight key evaluation dimensions, solidifying its position as the standout performer in this assessment.
The comprehensive evaluation meticulously assessed twelve prominent LLMs. These included offerings from Anthropic, OpenAI, Alibaba, ByteDance, DeepSeek, and Zhipu AI, among others. The assessment criteria encompassed model matrix effectiveness, functionality of the model software, ease of product use, hardware and software compatibility, product usage volume, community and ecosystem strength, breadth of application scenarios, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) user recommendations. It was in these crucial areas that Ernie demonstrated the strongest performance overall, showcasing a more complete and advanced product offering.
IDC’s report highlighted Ernie’s exceptional performance, awarding it top marks for its model software functionality, usability, hardware and software compatibility, product usage volume, community and ecosystem integration, application scenario breadth, and user recommendation score. This impressive performance marks Ernie as the only LLM to achieve a perfect score in seven of the eight evaluated dimensions.
The report specifically noted Baidu’s consistent focus on LLM research and development, recognizing its early entry into the field. IDC acknowledged Ernie’s strong performance in multi-turn dialogue capabilities, particularly in memory, comprehension, and instruction following. Moreover, the model demonstrated notable advancements in image understanding, table generation, and especially in translation capabilities within the technology sector. The report also emphasized the comprehensive nature of Ernie’s multi-modal features.
In late April, Baidu unveiled its latest advancements with the launch of Ernie 4.5 Turbo, a multi-modal foundation model, and the Deep Thinking Model, Ernie X1 Turbo.
Having been an early mover in the development of LLMs, Baidu has strategically positioned itself across the entire tech stack, from chips and frameworks to models and applications, giving it a clear technical edge in the AI model domain. The enhanced capabilities and efficiency of the Ernie model are a direct result of the ongoing optimization leveraging PaddlePaddle (Fei-jiang), a deep learning platform developed by Baidu. Currently, the PaddlePaddle-Ernie ecosystem boasts over 21.85 million developers, serves over 670,000 enterprises, and has facilitated the creation of 1.1 million models. According to IDC, “Baidu and Ernie have been pioneers in the industry, exhibiting a solid foundation and forward-thinking product strategy. Overall, the Ernie LLM stands out as the strongest, with the most complete and advanced product offerings.”
As the LLM space rapidly evolves in 2025, characterized by the release of numerous models, the focus of competition has shifted away from just raw parameters towards more complex areas. These include capability, ecosystem development, and real-world application deployment. Looking ahead, leading LLM providers are expected to further explore multi-modal advancements, build powerful tool ecosystems, and foster collaboration with AI agents, paving the way for widespread adoption of generative AI.
The report concludes that the Ernie LLM has established a comprehensive product matrix and an open platform system. This combined with enterprise-grade tools and a robust ecosystem, empowers both developers and industry clients to quickly integrate and customize solutions. This platform makes Ernie one of the most adaptable LLMs around and is poised to assist in transforming several industries with AI-driven solutions.
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