DEEPX, an AI semiconductor company specializing in low-power on-device AI, announced on the 18th that it has signed a ‘PaddlePaddle Technology Ecosystem Partnership’ agreement with global AI leader Baidu in Shenzhen, China, and will begin strategic cooperation to spread AI solutions applicable to global industrial sites.
As an official ecosystem partner based on Baidu’s open-source deep learning framework PaddlePaddle, DEEPX will jointly participate in various industrial AI projects, co-develop products based on technology compatibility, and promote global customer promotion activities.
Baidu’s PaddlePaddle is China’s first open-source deep learning framework, a core technology platform for creating and running AI models. The name is short for “PArallel Distributed Deep LEarning” and is designed to quickly process large amounts of data and operate efficiently on a variety of devices.
It is used in a wide range of industries, including smart cities, autonomous driving, image recognition, speech processing, and more, and is regarded as the most widely used AI development tool in China, adopted by thousands of companies and institutions, as well as by Baidu’s own internal products. In particular, PaddlePaddle is positioned as a “full-stack AI platform” that supports the entire process from AI model development to deployment by providing ready-to-use tools such as pre-trained models, lightweighting tools, and visualization tools.
Prior to the agreement, DEEPX’s mass-produced chip, the DX-M1, was demonstrated in real-time on Baidu’s fifth-generation PP-OCR and VLM-based models, achieving extremely high FPS (frames per second) and power efficiency (FPS/W), especially on industrial PCs based in edge environments with limited battery resources. Baidu has expressed a willingness for further active collaboration in the future.
The cooperation will extend not only to OCR, but also to drones and robots. Baidu PaddlePaddle and ERNIE Team will compile its current AI models for drones and VLM+obstacle avoidance models for robots into the DX-M1 and commercialize them for deployment in real-world robotics and drone projects.
Meanwhile, DEEPX is in the process of converting and compiling 10 representative OpenVINO-based AI models widely used in the industry to be compatible with the DX-M1, and these models will be shared with global partners in Baidu’s PaddlePaddle ecosystem. This is expected to make it easier for various customers to adopt and scale AI products powered by DEEPX NPUs.
DEEPX is also developing V-NPU, a dedicated NPU card for vision AI that can replace GPUs, and has completed initial demos with mass production expected to begin in September. Cooperation between DEEPX and Baidu on next-generation product development is also being discussed. DEEPX will utilize Samsung Foundry’s next-generation AI semiconductor “DX-M2” based on 2nm process to validate a prototype to run Baidu’s large AI model “ERNIE-4.5-VL-28B-A3B” (MoE-based).
In addition, Baidu PaddlePaddle and ERNIE Team has proposed to jointly exhibit DEEPX at the 2025 Shenzhen (International) Artificial General Intelligence Conference in Shenzhen at the end of August, and will also conduct on-site demonstrations and joint marketing to global customers.
Baidu PaddlePaddle and ERNIE Team said: “As a partner with excellent low-power AI semiconductor technology, DEEPX will add powerful edge computing capabilities to Baidu AI technical ecosystem, especially the DX-M1, which greatly enhances the practical applicability of PaddlePaddle-based AI models in various industries such as OCR, robotics, and drones. Through this collaboration, Baidu PaddlePaddle and ERNIE will accelerate the expansion of the ecosystem to make it easier for more companies to implement AI in real-world industries.”
“Our partnership with Baidu, marks an important turning point in the rapid spread of DEEPX’s AI semiconductor technology to global industrial sites,” said Lokwon Kim, CEO of DEEPX. “We will strengthen our competitiveness in the global AI market through practical productization based on the PaddlePaddle and ERNIE Ecosystem and various industrial collaborations.”
