Baidu used Baidu World 2026 on November 12 to launch Token Exchange, a marketplace where businesses can compare and buy AI model services with verified pricing and performance, and to spotlight ERNIE 5.5 Flash Preview, the first post-trained model built on its ERNIE 5.5 Flash Base. Why it matters: Baidu is no longer just selling its own model — it wants to be the trusted shop window for everyone else’s models too.
November 12, 2026
What happened at Baidu World 2026
Baidu unveiled a full-stack lineup spanning chips, cloud, models and agents, framed by co-founder and CEO Robin Li as a push to turn companies into “intelligent organizations.” The headline launches were Token Exchange, a marketplace for model services, and ERNIE 5.5 Flash Preview, alongside two smaller application models, upgrades to four Baidu agents, a new 1,024-card supernode, and an updated roadmap for its Kunlunxin AI chips. All of the usage and performance figures in this post are Baidu-reported and have not been independently verified.
ERNIE 5.5 Flash Preview: the post-trained model arrives
Readers who saw our November 5 coverage of the downloadable ERNIE 5.5 Flash Base checkpoint now get the follow-through Baidu promised. The Preview, released November 11, is the first post-trained model built on that base: 280 billion total parameters with 14 billion activated per token, and a context window of 1 million tokens. Baidu positions it for coding, 3D modeling, knowledge work and content creation, and says it was tuned with ERNIE Evolve, its recursive self-improvement technology, to cut inference cost. The API is live now on Baidu AI Cloud’s Qianfan platform at RMB 1 per million input tokens and RMB 4 per million output tokens, with cached input at RMB 0.04 per million, and the model is also available free on OpenRouter. Baidu says the weights will be open-sourced under Apache 2.0 by November 25, while cautioning that this is an intermediate checkpoint and training is still continuing. Two application models launched with it: ERNIE Wizshot Micro-Expression for expressive video creation, and ERNIE Light Deep Thinking for complex search requests and tool calls.
Token Exchange: a marketplace that checks what it sells
Token Exchange is Baidu’s bid to become the place enterprises buy model access, including from rival providers. Listings are verified by comparing model fingerprints and testing capability, performance and availability, and providers get credit ratings from regular spot checks and real-time monitoring of calls. One month in, Baidu says the exchange has onboarded more than 100 model resources and now averages more than 50 million calls and over 700 billion tokens a day. Around the launches, Baidu also upgraded its DuMate, KOOKO, Yijing and Famou agents, launched the Tianchi 1024-card Supernode for its cloud, and said its Kunlunxin M100 inference chip has shipped, with the flagship M300 expected in 2027.
Why it matters
Two moves here are worth watching. First, the Flash Preview keeps Baidu’s open-weight cadence going: a cheap, fast API today and downloadable weights within two weeks is exactly the playbook Chinese labs have used to win developers away from closed models. Second, Token Exchange is a trust play, not a model play. If enterprises really cannot tell whether a cheap endpoint is the model it claims to be, a marketplace that fingerprints and continuously rates providers solves a real problem — and puts Baidu in the toll-booth position even when the winning model is not Baidu’s. The catch is that every number backing that pitch so far comes from Baidu itself.
Frequently asked questions
Is ERNIE 5.5 Flash Preview the same as the base model released on November 5?
No. The November 5 release was the raw pre-training checkpoint. The Preview is the first post-trained, instruction-ready model built on that base.
When can developers download the Preview weights?
Baidu says the weights will be open-sourced under Apache 2.0 by November 25, 2026. Until then it is API-only, via Qianfan or free on OpenRouter.
What is Token Exchange?
A Baidu marketplace where businesses compare and buy AI model services from multiple providers, with each listing verified by fingerprint checks and ongoing performance monitoring, plus provider credit ratings.
Sources: Baidu via PR Newswire, Unite.AI