Baidu's founder and CEO, Li Yanhong, did not attend a symposium hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping for private companies, Reuters reported on the 17th.
Reuters cited two sources familiar with the matter, indicating that Li Yanhong was absent among the attendees. Among the private company magnates present were Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who had previously fallen out of favor with Xi, alongside Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu, Unitree Chairman Wang Xingxing, Xiaomi Chairman Lei Jun, and DeepSeek founder Liang Wendong, yet Li did not attend.
This raises speculation that Baidu has lost its significant position in the market. According to the Singapore United Daily, a sales manager from a local securities firm, requesting anonymity, noted, "This suggests that Baidu is losing the leading edge gained through the development of its artificial intelligence model 'Ernie' (Wenxin Yiyan) over the years, indicating that it is following in the footsteps of latecomers like DeepSeek."
After this news broke, Baidu's stock price on the Hong Kong stock market fell more than 8% during the trading session, marking the biggest drop among the Hang Seng Index. Although Baidu announced plans to incorporate DeepSeek into its large language model 'Wenxin' the previous day, it could not prevent the decline in stock prices.
According to Reuters, the presence of Zhang Yiming, founder of TikTok's parent company ByteDance, was also not seen at the symposium.