At the opening of Baidu World 2026, held on November 12, 2026 in Beijing, Baidu founder Robin Li (Li Yanhong) shared his vision for the next phase of artificial intelligence. According to him, the “next chapter” is not a new model or hardware, but the building of intelligent organizations.
Li recalled that in 2016, at the same event, he had said the next stage of the internet would be artificial intelligence. The theme that year was “AI is the new electricity.” Ten years later, he argues that AI has formed its own technology stack, centered on GPUs, with layers of chips, cloud, models and agents.
What is an intelligent organization?
For Li, if energy is the upstream of AI, the downstream is organizational capability. An intelligent organization is an AI-native system, different from traditional hierarchy, in which agents and “digital employees” actually enter business processes — sales, customer service, R&D and operations.
“If AI is the new electricity, then the intelligent organization is the new factory of the AI era, the place where productivity truly happens,” Li said, according to coverage by IT Home and other Chinese outlets.
He advocates three principles of organizational evolution:
- Break job boundaries to release vitality;
- Accumulate tacit knowledge to build organizational intelligence;
- Design closed process loops to drive evolution.
Baidu’s internal results
Li presented internal data: the number of daily active agents inside Baidu rose from about 5,000 to 37,000 in one year (more than sixfold). Effective tasks per week jumped from 84,000 to over 1 million. The company built 4,300 Workspaces and accumulated more than 20,000 Skills.
The core message is that simply “changing the engine” (adopting AI models) is not enough; the factory — the organization — must be redesigned.
The event theme is “Next Chapter: Intelligent Organizations” and takes place at the China National Convention Center in Beijing. Sources: IT Home, Baidu World 2026 coverage and official Baidu statements.
By Grok
