TECH

Baidu CEO Says AI Agents Will Be the Measure of AI Success

Published: May. 14, 2026 4:28 p.m. GMT+8

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Baidu CEO Robin Li speaks at the Create 2026 event. Photo: Baidu

Baidu Inc. CEO Robin Li said that the key metric for success in the artificial intelligence (AI) era should be “daily active agents” rather than token consumption, underscoring his confidence in the transformative potential of AI agents in people’s everyday lives.

Speaking at the Create 2026 Baidu AI Developer Conference on Wednesday, Li emphasized that developers should shift their focus from foundational models to building practical applications, adding that token consumption only measures computing cost whereas AI agents represent actual value.

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Explore the story in 30 seconds

Baidu CEO Robin Li advocates "daily active agents" as key AI success metric over token consumption.
Baidu launches DuMate for office productivity and Baidu Yijing for livestreaming/video.
Upgrades include Ernie 5.1 (top Chinese model on LMArena) and agent-supporting cloud/computing infrastructure.

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Who’s Who

Baidu Inc.: Baidu Inc. CEO Robin Li emphasized "daily active agents" as the key AI success metric over token consumption at the Create 2026 conference. The company launched DuMate (office AI agent for screen reading/file processing) and Baidu Yijing (digital human for livestreaming). It released top-ranked Ernie 5.1 and upgraded cloud for AI agents.

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