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Earlier today, a number of media published the news that the Baidu unmanned car project is preparing a spin-off plan and is looking for financing from outside investment institutions. According to the news, "Baidu unmanned car is looking for financing from external investment institutions and plans to spin it off." After the above news reports, Baidu Public Relations Department responded to false reports through the media, saying that Baidu Apollo had no plans to spin off at present. At the same time, it also said that Apollo is one of the important territory of Baidu AI strategy, which is developing steadily in accordance with the existing strategy.

The Baidu unmanned car project is to provide an open, complete and safe software platform for partners in the automotive industry and self-driving field in 2017 to help them combine vehicles and hardware systems. quickly build a complete self-driving system of your own. Baidu's opening up project is to build a cooperation-centric ecosystem, give full play to its technological advantages in the field of artificial intelligence, promote the development and popularization of self-driving technology, and name the project "Apollo".

As early as 2018, Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu, said in an interview with Bloomberg: "when Baidu's driverless car business matures and needs more capital and partners, we may consider breaking it up." However, there has been no further progress since the split of the unmanned car business.

With the release of Baidu's results this week, Baidu posted its first loss in the first quarter, and the urgent need for commercialization and external funding for self-driving projects has become the biggest challenge.

The difficulties faced by Baidu unmanned cars mainly include: car factories all want to build their own unmanned cars, and Baidu is more likely to borrow from each other, the stronger the car factories are, the less dependent they are on Baidu, and the unclear willingness to share data and core technology. Even if it is successful at the technical level, there are not many cash-out models for the "Apollo" program.

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