The democratization of software engineering has entered its most radical phase in early 2026, catalyzed by a shift in perspective from one of the most influential figures in the global artificial intelligence landscape. At the recent Baidu World Conference, Robin Li, the Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU), articulated a vision that challenges the traditional barriers to entry in the digital economy. Proclaiming that “future app development will be as simple as making short videos,” Li is signaling a departure from the era of specialized coding toward an “agent-centric” world where natural language is the primary programming interface. This transition, underpinned by the maturation of the ERNIE 4.5 and X1 foundational models, is not merely a technical prediction but a strategic mandate for Baidu as it seeks to monetize its massive investments in large language models (LLMs) and cloud infrastructure.
For institutional investors and analysts tracking the Chinese tech sector, Li’s statement serves as a foundational thesis for Baidu’s (NASDAQ:BIDU) 2026 fiscal year. The company is betting that the next wave of productivity gains will not come from “super apps” but from a fragmented, vibrant ecosystem of millions of “AI Agents”—specialized, intelligent software entities created by non-technical users. By lowering the threshold of creation to the level of content consumption—analogous to how platforms like TikTok and Douyin, owned by ByteDance Ltd., democratized video production—Baidu aims to position its AI Cloud as the indispensable operating system for the next generation of digital services.
The Financial Architecture of the “Agent” Era
The shift toward simplified app development is reflected in Baidu’s (NASDAQ:BIDU) shifting revenue mix. In the third quarter of 2025, while traditional search-related online marketing revenue faced structural headwinds, Baidu Core’s AI-native businesses demonstrated explosive growth. Revenue from AI-native marketing services surged by a staggering 262% year-over-year, reaching RMB 2.8 billion. This growth is directly attributed to the company’s “AgentBuilder” and “Miaoda” platforms, which allow small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to create sophisticated AI agents that handle customer service, lead generation, and sales without writing a single line of code.
Baidu’s AI Cloud revenue, another critical pillar of this strategy, grew by 33% in late 2025, outperforming legacy rivals such as Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) and Tencent Holdings Limited (OTC:TCEHY) in the high-performance computing (HPC) subsegment. Within this division, subscription-based revenue from AI accelerator infrastructure increased by 128%, signaling that enterprises are not just “testing” AI but are integrating it into their core operational workflows. By early 2026, Baidu’s (NASDAQ:BIDU) Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform had become the primary driver of cloud profitability, as the company successfully reduced the inference costs of its ERNIE models by over 90% compared to late 2023 levels. This cost reduction is what makes the “simple as a short video” development model economically viable for the masses.
Strategic Platforms: Miaoda and the Death of Traditional Coding
The technical cornerstone of Robin Li’s vision is “Miaoda,” a no-code development tool launched in late 2024 that has reached significant scale by January 2026. Miaoda leverages the reasoning capabilities of ERNIE 4.5 to translate a user’s verbal or written description into a functioning application. Unlike previous “low-code” iterations that still required an understanding of logical flows, Miaoda utilizes multi-agent collaboration—where different specialized AI agents (such as a “programmer agent,” a “designer agent,” and a “QA agent”) work together to build the final product.
In Li’s view, this replaces the traditional software development life cycle with a conversational one. For a company like Meituan (OTC:MPNGF), which manages a vast and complex logistics and merchant network, the ability for individual restaurant owners to build custom inventory management or promotion agents via natural language represents a significant shift in value distribution. Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) is positioning itself as the toll-taker on these interactions. Every “run” of an agent created on Miaoda consumes tokens on the Baidu AI Cloud, effectively turning millions of amateur developers into a recurring revenue stream for the company’s infrastructure business.
Competitive Dynamics: Applications vs. Foundation Models
The strategic divergence between Baidu and its Western peers, such as Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL), has become more pronounced in 2026. While the “Magnificent Seven” in the United States continue to engage in a multi-billion-dollar arms race for raw parameter count and hardware dominance with NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), Robin Li has redirected Baidu’s focus toward the “application layer.” Li’s frequently cited concern is that a focus on foundation models alone, without a corresponding explosion in applications, could lead to an “AI bubble” where massive compute power exists with no productive outlet.
To prevent this, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) has opened its core search environment to third-party agents, allowing users to find and interact with AI-native apps directly through the search bar. This transforms the legacy search engine into a dynamic “Agent Marketplace.” This strategy is designed to reclaim user attention from short-video platforms and social commerce giants. By making app development “simple,” Baidu is essentially outsourcing its innovation to its user base, hoping that a “killer app” emerges from the millions of agents being built daily on its platform.
Apollo Go and the Physical App: Autonomous Driving as Software
A crucial, yet often overlooked, extension of Robin Li’s vision is the “physical application” of AI through autonomous driving. Baidu’s (NASDAQ:BIDU) Apollo Go robotaxi service has achieved a significant milestone in early 2026, receiving its first international driverless testing permit in Dubai. This follows a highly successful 2025 in which the company completed over 3.1 million quarterly rides across 22 Chinese cities.
From a financial perspective, the “Apollo VTA” (Vision Takes All) foundation model represents the pinnacle of Baidu’s app-development simplicity. By training its autonomous system on over 100 million kilometers of real-world data, Baidu has reduced the “coding” of a robotaxi’s behavior into a generalized AI learning process. As of the first quarter of 2026, Apollo Go has achieved positive unit economics in major hubs like Wuhan and Beijing, with weekly driverless orders surpassing 250,000. This success validates the idea that even the most complex “applications”—such as navigating a multi-ton vehicle through urban traffic—are ultimately becoming functions of the same AI architectures that power simple chatbots and video editors.
Operational Risks and Valuation Headwinds
Despite the optimism, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) faces significant headwinds that have kept its valuation at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of approximately 11x—a significant discount compared to its global peers. The primary concern among analysts at firms like Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) is the “margin compression” caused by the transition from high-margin search advertising to lower-margin AI Cloud and hardware businesses. In the 2025 fiscal year, Baidu’s operating income saw pressure as the company ramped up capital expenditures for its Kunlunxin AI chips and expanded its robotaxi fleet.
Furthermore, the “simple app development” model brings with it substantial regulatory and safety challenges. If anyone can create an “app,” the potential for AI-generated misinformation, fraudulent agents, and data privacy breaches increases exponentially. Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) has responded by implementing a rigorous “Agent Certification” system, but the costs of moderating a decentralized ecosystem of millions of agents could weigh on its long-term profitability. Additionally, the ongoing geopolitical tensions regarding advanced semiconductor access continue to cast a shadow over Baidu’s ability to scale its most advanced models, although the company’s internal chip development and its “heterogeneous Mixture-of-Experts” (MoE) architecture have provided some degree of resilience.
The 2026 Outlook: From Search Engine to AI Utility
As we look toward the remainder of 2026, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) is no longer a “search company” in the eyes of the capital markets; it is an “AI utility.” The success of Robin Li’s “simple development” vision will be measured by whether the surge in AI-native marketing revenue can finally offset the secular decline of traditional ad spending. With Baidu’s stock rallying over 50% through 2025 to end near $130 per share, the market has begun to price in the success of Ernie Bot 4.5, but the “app explosion” Li predicts must materialize into meaningful earnings-per-share (EPS) growth to sustain this momentum.
The comparison with Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) is telling. While Uber remains the global leader in traditional ride-hailing, Baidu’s superior valuation edge in the autonomous space—trading at a forward price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 2.45x versus Uber’s 3.01x—suggests that the market is finally recognizing the value of Baidu’s integrated AI stack. If Robin Li is correct, and app development truly becomes as ubiquitous and simple as short-video creation, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) will be the primary beneficiary of a massive shift in how humanity interacts with technology.
Conclusion: The Future of the Digital Interface
Robin Li’s vision of a future where app development is “as simple as making short videos” represents the ultimate maturation of the AI age. By removing the friction of technical expertise, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) is attempting to unlock the creative potential of hundreds of millions of people, effectively turning the entire internet into a programmable canvas. For the investor, 2026 is the year where the “hype” of foundation models must transition into the “utility” of everyday applications.
Whether Baidu can successfully maintain its technological edge against increasingly aggressive competitors like ByteDance and Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) remains the multi-billion-dollar question. However, with the successful rollout of the NT2 platform for its robotaxis and the rapid adoption of Miaoda among SMEs, the company has provided a clear, data-driven roadmap for its future. As the barriers between “user” and “developer” continue to dissolve, Baidu stands as the architect of a world where the only limit to digital innovation is the user’s ability to describe their needs to a machine.
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