Baidu Launches ERNIE 5.5 Flash Preview and Token Exchange, Discloses Low-Cost API Pricing and Surge in Internal Agent Usage
At its 2026 World Conference, Baidu released the ERNIE 5.5 Flash Preview model with competitive API pricing and launched the Token Exchange marketplace, while revealing a significant increase in internal agent adoption.
Chinese technology company Baidu unveiled its latest foundation model, ERNIE 5.5 Flash Preview, and launched a new marketplace called "Token Exchange" at its annual World Conference on November 12, 2026. The announcements included major upgrades to its agent product line and a vision for the "intelligent organization" outlined by Co-founder and CEO Robin Li.
ERNIE 5.5 Flash Preview is a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model with 280 billion total parameters and 14 billion active parameters per token, supporting a 1 million token context window. Baidu claims strong performance in coding, 3D modeling, and content creation, optimized by its proprietary recursive self-improvement technology, ERNIE Evolve. Notably, Baidu disclosed specific API pricing: RMB 1 per million input tokens and RMB 4 per million output tokens, with cached input at just RMB 0.04. Model weights will be open-sourced by November 25. This aggressive pricing strategy suggests Baidu aims to expand its market share by lowering barriers to entry for developers.
Beyond the model itself, Baidu's Token Exchange serves as a neutral marketplace connecting AI model providers with customers. Users can compare model services side-by-side based on price and performance, accessing them through a single interface. According to Baidu, the platform has onboarded over 100 model resources in its first month, handling an average of more than 50 million calls and 700 billion tokens daily. This initiative addresses the difficulty of discovering high-quality model services and may help utilize underused compute resources.
Regarding internal applications, Robin Li disclosed concrete progress in Baidu's transformation into an "intelligent organization." Over the past year, the number of daily active agents (DAA) within Baidu surged from 5,000 to 37,000, an increase of over 600%. Weekly tasks completed by agents rose from 84,000 to more than 1 million. These figures provide investors with a quantifiable view of how Baidu is converting AI technology into operational efficiency. Additionally, Baidu upgraded its general-purpose agent DuMate and digital human agent Baidu Yijing, and presented a new roadmap for its Kunlunxin chips.