Baidu AI Cloud Restructures: MaaS Moves to Infrastructure, Agent Division Formed
Baidu AI Cloud has restructured its research and development organization, renaming its Platform Product Division to the Agent Division and transferring its MaaS business and Qianfan brand to the Infrastructure Division. Additionally, Baidu has consolidated its internal office agent "dodo" into the "Baidu Dazi" team to centralize its AI office products. This restructuring reflects Baidu's strategic pivot towards AI-first operations, prioritizing autonomous AI Agents as a standalone product category while treating Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) as foundational infrastructure. It aims to streamline development and accelerate the commercialization of AI applications in a highly competitive market. Under the new structure, three main divisions emerge: Infrastructure (managing AI and Agent Infra), Agent (focusing on products like Miaoda and Baidu Dazi), and Intelligent Application (managing industry-specific applications). All three division leaders report directly to Shen Dou, Executive Vice President of Baidu Group and President of the Smart Cloud Group.
## BACKGROUND
Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a cloud computing model that provides access to machine learning models via APIs, allowing developers to build applications without hosting the models themselves. AI Agents are autonomous software entities powered by large language models that can reason, plan, and execute multi-step tasks to achieve specific goals. Baidu Qianfan is Baidu's flagship platform designed to help enterprises access these models and develop AI-native applications.