"One thing we learned from DeepSeek is that open-sourcing the best models can greatly help adoption," said Baidu's Robin Li.

Baidu CEO Robin Li, who previously advocated for closed-source models, reportedly acknowledged the potential of open-source development to accelerate AI adoption.

DeepSeek is spurring competitors at home and abroad to consider an open-source strategy in artificial intelligence (AI) development, following the Chinese start-up's release of powerful low-cost models that upended how large language models (LLMs) are trained.

Chinese search engine group Baidu said on Tuesday that the success of AI company DeepSeek had inspired it to embrace an open source model, under which the source code of its upcoming generative AI chatbot release will be publicly available.