Robin Li, its chairman and chief executive, announced “Baidu Brain” last Thursday during a “Baidu Technology Innovation Conference” in Beijing. Baidu Brain is the core of the tech company’s plans on artificial intelligence, which consists of three parts – artificial-intelligence (AI) algorithms, computing power, and big data.

On Friday, at a global business forum during the same event, Baidu president Zhang Yaqin said the company’s revenue coming from its global business had more than quintupled from September last year, but did not disclose the exact number.

Baidu’s globalisation, along with Baidu Brain, is the next big vision for the company, said Zhang. “During the process, we will choose the right country, the right products and technologies, and the right business model.

“We prefer populous emerging markets where the prospect of mobile Internet is huge. There we will recruit local talent, cooperate with local enterprises, respect local culture, and abide by local laws and regulations,” he said. “That’s what we call ‘Global Technology, Local Partnership or glocal’.”

Zhang said that in the next five years, AI technologies, including machine learning, would be more deeply embedded in all products to use Baidu’s know-how better and show the world a smarter global drive.

Hu Yong, general manager of Baidu’s global business unit, said the company’s mobile Internet products had taken foothold in more than 200 countries and regions, with 1.6 billion overseas users, of whom 300 million are active monthly.

Meanwhile, DU Ad Platform (DAP), the company’s global mobile advertising platform, has connected more than 1,400 developers, with 1.5 billion daily ad requests, which has helped tech start-ups go global.

“Currently, our main battlefields are Southeast Asia and Latin America, such as Indonesia and Brazil. And we are also tapping into developed nations such as Japan and the United States,” Hu said.

He said creating real value was the only way to attract users and retain them, adding: “With users, we can capitalise and continue to grow.”

The number of Chinese Internet companies going overseas has been surging since 2015, with a year-on-year growth of 214 per cent by this month, according to Baidu, which did not reveal the precise number. However, a report jointly released by iResearch and baijingapp.com showed that the number of Chinese tech firms going global had surpassed 6,000 with more than 11,000 mobile apps by August.

“Tooling products would be the easiest [way], and thus the first choice, for a Chinese tech company to tap overseas markets,” said Tang Cailin, product director of Baidu’s global business unit. “The next is content-based or social-networking products, which involve more efforts on localisation.”

Hu said: “The best time has come for Chinese Internet companies to go global, and there are lots of opportunities out there. But the first step is to survive. For that, we need to have really sharp eyes.”