Baidu appoints Haijian He as new CFO in management reshuffle

BEIJING - Chinese tech giant Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU and HKEX:9888), currently valued at $29.48 billion and trading at an attractive P/E ratio of 8.56, announced Tuesday the appointment of Haijian He as its new Chief Financial Officer, effective immediately.

He joins Baidu from Kingsoft Cloud Holdings Limited, where he served as executive director and chief financial officer since January 2020. His previous experience includes executive roles at Goldman Sachs (Asia) L.L.C., Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. According to InvestingPro, Baidu maintains strong financial health with more cash than debt on its balance sheet and a healthy current ratio of 2.29.

As part of the management changes, Junjie He, who had been serving as Interim Chief Financial Officer, will transition to the role of Senior Vice President overseeing human resources and administrative functions. Additionally, Shanshan Cui has been appointed as Secretary General to the company’s Organizational Culture Committee.

Robin Yanhong Li, Baidu’s Co-founder and CEO, expressed confidence that Haijian He’s leadership experience would contribute to "Baidu’s next phase of growth" and thanked the executives moving to new roles for their contributions.

The new CFO holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electronic engineering from Southeast University, an MBA from University of Chicago, and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst charter holder.

Baidu, founded in 2000, describes itself as a leading AI company with a strong Internet foundation. The management change announcement was made through a company press release.

In other recent news, Baidu, Inc. has introduced two new advanced artificial intelligence models, ERNIE 4.5 Turbo and ERNIE X1 Turbo, at its annual developer conference, Baidu Create 2025. These models are noted for their enhanced capabilities and cost-effectiveness, with ERNIE 4.5 Turbo priced at just 20% of its predecessor’s cost and ERNIE X1 Turbo available at half the price of ERNIE X1. Baidu claims that ERNIE X1 Turbo offers improved performance at only 25% of the cost of its competitor, DeepSeek R1. Alongside these models, Baidu launched a multi-agent collaboration app, Xinxiang, which can perform complex tasks from a single sentence prompt. The company also showcased digital humans with lifelike voices and appearances. Baidu announced the AI Open Initiative to provide developers with access to traffic and monetization opportunities, integrating the Model Context Protocol into its products. Additionally, Baidu revealed plans for the third ERNIE Cup Innovation Challenge with increased prize amounts and aims to nurture 10 million AI talents over the next five years.

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