Baidu intelligent driving group said to be independent company

Beijing (Gasgoo)- Baidu's intelligent driving group (IDG) is said to be independent of Baidu Group, having transferred employees and assets to several Baidu’s subsidiariess, sources inside IDG told local media outlet, Tencent Shenwang.

Baidu Apollo; photo credit: Baidu

According to the sources, the staff and assets of IDG have been gradually transferred to several wholly-owned subsidiaries of Baidu. However, employees' titles and treatments remained unchanged. The senior vice president of Baidu and general manager of IDG, Li Zhenyu, said that the changes were made for better operations of IDG, eventually making it an independent company with its own legal representative.

Despite the changes, IDG will still be a business group within Baidu, architecturally speaking, the sources added.

Moreover, it was discovered that after the transfer had been made, several commercial-focused departments of IDG were required to formulate and accomplish their own annual revenue targets. A member from IDG said that currently, aside from Baidu's monetary allocations, the group is mandated to make money by itself. 

In September, Baidu's vice president Chu Ruisong, formerly in charge of the group's B2B SaaS cloud-related business, has become the rotating general manager of IDG's vehicle intelligence business unit, reporting to Li Zhenyu. 

With Chu Ruisong's leadership, the business strategy of the vehicle intelligence unit was also shifted. An IDG employee said that the unit's main products would change from the original customization pattern into a standardized open SDK pattern, allowing large-scale deliveries. The new strategy is set to rival the TAI V2X from Tencent.