(Chinese Version)

China’s tech giant Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) announced that its financial service unit has split off from its parent Baidu. Named Du Xiaoman Financial, the new entity will make independent operation. Zhu Guang, Baidu’s Senior Vice President & General Manager of the financial service unit, will serve as the CEO.

Du Xiaoman has raised over USD 1.9 billion led by U.S. private equity firm TPG and the Carlyle Group. China’s Taikang Group and others participated in the round. Du Xiaoman will use the newly raised capital to strengthen its technical capabilities, open up more platforms, and invest in building up the financial ecosystem.

“Under Baidu’s ecosystem strategy of artificial intelligence (AI), I am very pleased to see that the financial business has taken the lead in graduation," said Robin Li, Chairman & CEO of Baidu. "This is another milestone event for Baidu's AI ecosystem after the listing of iQiyi. Under the background of the times of innovation, the financial business of Baidu has continuously made breakthroughs and has grown into a unicorn itself in the fintech area. With the empowerment of Baidu’s AI ability and application of financial scenes, the development of technology and business model of Baidu’s financial arm have been keeping optimizing, and even have helped the whole AI ecosystem of Baidu develop. This exactly shows the great strategic collaboration ability of Baidu’s AI ecosystem and its new business.

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