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LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / April 17, 2017 / Active Wall St. blog coverage looks at the headline from Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU). Chinese Internet search firm Baidu announced on April 13, 2017, that it has acquired a US based start-up Company xPerception that specializes in visual perception technology. The financial details of the transaction were not revealed by both Companies. Register with us now for your free membership and blog access at: http://www.activewallst.com/register/.

One of Baidu's competitors within the Internet Information Providers space, Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), is expected to report fiscal quarter ending March 2017 earnings results on May 03 2017 after market close. AWS will be initiating a research report on Facebook following the release of its next earnings results.

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Once the transaction is completed, the core team of xPerception will be integrated into Baidu Research and move to Baidu's US and Beijing offices. Post the merger, xPerception's team will continue working on its main technologies - visual inertial simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM).

Rationale behind the acquisition

The current acquisition is key to Baidu's efforts to strengthen its position as a global leader in the field of AI (Artificial Intelligence). In recent times, Baidu has made serious investments to strengthen its core research team working on AI technologies at its various R&D facilities located in Silicon Valley, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. These AI technologies have been incorporated in many of Baidu's products. Baidu plans to use xPerception's technology for developing self-driving cars and other VR (virtual reality) projects.

In February 2017, Baidu had acquired a Chinese start-up Raven Tech that focuses on AI and next-generation operating systems. Raven Tech's had developed Flow, a voice based digital assistant like "Siri". Raven Tech is one of the start-ups supported by Microsoft Venture Accelerator Y Combinator and has raised $18 million from investors like Zhenfund and DCM Ventures.

Baidu has a long way to catch up with contemporaries like Google who have made huge strides in AI. Apart from recent acquisitions, Baidu is planning to strengthen its AI efforts by targeting and attracting engineers and researchers from top US research universities such as Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, and Stanford.

These engineers and researchers will be absorbed in Baidu Research. Baidu Research has four labs across US and China which includes the Silicon Valley AI Lab, the Institute of Deep Learning, the Big Data Lab, and the Augmented Reality Lab. These labs are completely focused on AI technologies like image recognition, speech recognition, high performance computing, natural language processing, and deep learning.

About xPerception

Mountain View, California based xPerception was founded in 2016 by engineers Bao Yingze and Chen Mingyu. Both had earlier worked with internet and computer services start-up Magic Leap. xPerception specializes in visual perception technology for machines using AI (Artificial Intelligence). Visual perception for machines is an emerging technology that uses software and hardware to allow machines like robots and drones etc. to "see" their environments and navigate with an error margin of just 1%.

xPerception uses its proprietary technology SLAM in its Visual perception projects. SLAM is fast, efficient, and it is as accurate as a PC. This technology can be used for various applications in the areas of augmented/virtual reality, autonomous driving, and artificial intelligence as well as devices for people with visual impairment. xPerception has developed a special 3D visual inertial camera with software SDK which runs on x86 or x64, ARM, or other mobile platforms. This camera features 6-degrees of freedom pose tracking, low-latency sensor fusion, as well as 3D obstacle detection and object recognition. This allows machines to gain "vision" and thus maneuver around obstacles like humans.

Currently xPerception's software and hardware solutions are being used in multiple projects by VR industry leaders and public Companies in the US and China for their clients.

xPerception's technology will be especially useful in self-driving cars. Baidu is already working on developing a self-driving car under Baidu's Autonomous Driving Unit (ADU). Baidu's ADU is developing autonomous driving technologies at Level 4 automation, per the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) definition and aims to commercialize autonomous driving by 2018 and start mass production by 2020.

Stock Performance

At the close of trading session on Thursday, April 13, 2017, Baidu's stock price slightly declined 0.58% to end the day at $172.61. A total volume of 1.33 million shares were exchanged during the session. The Company's share price has gained 0.33% in the past one month and 4.99% on YTD basis. The stock is trading at a PE ratio of 44.45 and currently has a market cap of $59.94 billion.

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