On February 7th this year, Li Yanhong, chairman and CEO of Baidu Corporation, issued an internal letter for the New Year entitled "Towards a New Era - Content Distribution, Connectivity Services, Financial Innovation, and Artificial Intelligence." These four directions were interpreted by Li Yanhong as the four major business development directions for Baidu this year. This was only 21 days before Baidu announced that Lu Qi had joined the president and COO. On the next day after the release of the internal letter, Lu Qi burned the "first fire" of the new official to Baidu Medical Division. Subsequently, Baidu experienced nearly half a year's structural and business adjustments, Baidu takeaway, 91 wireless was "cleaned up" from the old business. While throwing away old bags, new blood is also being added. According to 21st Century Business Herald, the total number of Baidu’s wholly-owned acquisitions in 2017 was 3: Raven Technologies, xPerception and Kitt.AI. The three companies focus on the next generation of operating systems based on AI and new interactions, computer vision hardware and software solutions, voice wake-up and natural voice interaction technologies. Baidu’s business positioning has also become particularly clear in 2017. “Baidu’s current core business direction is artificial intelligence and content distribution,†a person from Baidu told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter. “The artificial intelligence is divided into two lines and one is based on DuerOS. One is the unmanned ecology built on the basis of the Apollo project. Baidu Cloud and Baidu's brain exist as the underlying support. Content distribution includes traditional search services and feed flow services, and financial services are relatively independent." Soft and hard combination Although not the BAT giant with the largest number of investment projects in 2017, Baidu’s efforts in wholly-owned acquisitions exceeded those of the other two. According to the statistics of publicly available data, in 2017, Alibaba’s wholly-owned acquisition projects included two projects, namely, Kanyue Technology and Damai. Tencent did not have a wholly-owned acquisition. Baidu’s enthusiasm for wholly-owned acquisitions mainly comes from its own core business needs. In February of this year, Baidu announced a wholly-owned acquisition of Raven Technologies, the founder of Lu Yi and the team officially joined Baidu, and served as Baidu's general manager of smart home hardware. The strategic direction of the combination of software and hardware is the signal revealed by this acquisition. At the Baidu World Congress in 2017 in November, Baidu Raven released the intelligent speaker Baidu RavenH, equipped with the DuerOS intelligent voice operating system, and became a landmark product for Baidu’s company to enter the smart speaker industry. From the wholly-funded acquisition of xPerception, Baidu's intention of combining software and hardware can be further confirmed. According to the data, xPerception has developed a stereoscopic inertial camera product that can be applied to x86/x64, ARM or mobile phone platforms based on accurate and stable spatial positioning and map reconstruction technology (SLAM, SimultaneousLocalizationAndMapping). The product has functions such as degree of freedom attitude tracking, low-delay sensor fusion, stereoscopic obstacle detection, and object recognition. It is equivalent to installing “eyes†for various intelligent hardware and mobile devices. The acquisition of KITT.AI is aimed at strengthening the experience in the process of combining hardware and software. When Jing Duo, general manager of Baidu Distinctive Department, introduced the DuerOS open platform, he said that the core three elements of awakening things are to listen to, understand, and satisfy. Among them, understanding is the key problem solved with data and technology in the era of artificial intelligence. After the combination of hardware and software, the user needs to wake up to talk to the device and ask the device to do something. In this process, KITT.AI's powerful speech and natural language processing capabilities will play a huge role. Core in Baidu's strategic business From the overall investment project, artificial intelligence, travel and other fields accounted for most of Baidu's investment. According to the review, Baidu's investment projects in corporate services and recreation and entertainment reached 8 this year, 6 in the area of ​​artificial intelligence (including mergers and acquisitions), 5 in the travel field, and 3 in the hardware field. However, we cannot see the focus of Baidu's strategy. According to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, Baidu’s investment is accomplished through three independent teams: Baidu Investment and Acquisition, Baidu Ventures and Baidu Capital. The aforesaid wholly-owned acquisition projects including Raven Technologies were completed by the Baidu Investment and M&A Department. "Usually it can be understood that the investment and acquisition department is concerned about the current core and most close to the Baidu strategy business," a source from Baidu Capital told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, "Baidu Capital is a market fund, Baidu's investment It's only part of it, so the financial return is first." Of course, this person said that in the investment process, the strategic synergy effect between Baidu and the project is the best result. “This means that Baidu Capital can bring value to the company after the investment management, but in principle it does not force. †The same goes for Baidu venture capital. "Baidu Capital and Baidu Ventures are the differences in the investment phase, that is, the difference between VC and PE." The above-mentioned sources pointed out that "PE requires a mature business model, and VCs can be considered as determining the future direction due to their early release." According to 21st Century Business Herald’s review based on public information, Baidu’s investment in M&A involves three items, namely Tigergraph, China Unicom, and Dynamic Yield. The projects involved in artificial intelligence are four. , respectively Sonic Technology, Raven Technology, xPerception and KITT.AI. There are two items involved in the travel field, including the Easy Car Network and the Shouqi Automobile. There are 2 projects involved in entertainment, including 蜻蜓FM and iQiyi. In addition, there are 1 financial, tools and real estate business projects. Projects in the areas of education, logistics, and hardware are all completed by Baidu Capital and Baidu Ventures.