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Chinese company’s Baidu and Xiaomi are teaming up to work on development of the internet of things and artificial intelligence. The two companies have announced a strategic partnership to gain a foothold in the two emerging technology markets.
Announced today at Xiaomi’s first developer conference in Beijing, the deal brings together the third most valuable publicly traded Chinese technology company in Baidu and one of the world’s most valuable private firms, Xiaomi.
Baidu – worth some $86 billion – already as a keen eye on AI and deep learning, while Xiaomi has become a key player in Asia due to its affordable smartphones and devices. And while this is the first time that the two firms have officially announced a collaboration, a report by TechCrunch suggest that the two have worked together on devices in the past. According to the report, Xiaomi hardware devices have been running on Baidu’s conversational operating system, DuerOS, for some time. ‘That’s little known because it was left unbranded, but now the companies have made their partnership official,’ the TechCrunch report concludes.
Although specifics are still to be declared, the two companies have revealed that they will immediately begin work on developing voice recognition, deep learning and computer vision. The use of DuerOS is also expected to feature more prominently as the two firms work closer together.
