Ten Questions for Baidu Ventures: Focusing on Frontier Medical Technologies and Building Confidence in the Era of Hardcore AI

Baidu Ventures (hereinafter referred to as “BV”) is an independent venture capital firm initiated by Baidu and managed by a professional team. Its investors include Baidu as well as other leading industrial and financial institutions. BV currently manages three U.S. dollar and RMB funds with a total scale of $500 million, operating simultaneously in Beijing and San Francisco, and is committed to becoming a world-class VC in the AI era.

Based on its understanding of and vision for technology itself, Baidu Ventures (BV) is leveraging investment to build a more efficient intelligent world: one characterized by finer-grained perception, more precise decision-making, reduced labor costs, and superior efficiency models.

BV has invested in more than 100 AI companies—spanning from chips to sensors, from human data acquisition to space-based observation networks, and from smart industry to smart cities. It invests not only in the underlying technologies behind AI but also in the various industry transformations driven by AI. In the frontier field of medical biotechnology, BV has currently invested in nearly 20 companies, covering areas such as gene editing, AI-driven drug discovery, single-cell sequencing, and innovative health insurance.

On one hand, focus on foundational technology companies; on the other, pay attention to companies that leverage these underlying technologies to build new business systems. With a deep footprint in the healthcare industry, Baidu Ventures (BV) shares its perspectives on AI’s impact on the sector, its investment strategy logic, and the rationale behind partnering with leading industry players to support entrepreneurial teams with disruptive innovation potential. In a recent interview, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) spoke with Liu Wei, CEO of Baidu Ventures, and Ren Bobing, Vice President of Investment at Baidu Ventures, who provided their latest insights.

Liu Wei:In recent years, AI has made technological advancements and achieved significant improvements in the efficiency of individual points within business systems. However, it has not yet proven effective at the application level. Perhaps in the next 5 to 10 years, we will see corresponding applications emerge.

Liu Wei, CEO of Baidu Ventures

We believe that the true core capability of AI lies in leveraging its robust fuzzy perception and multi-dimensional data decision-making abilities to achieve more complex systems at a lower cost.

Take medical technology as an example. There are numerous potential data dimensions for AI to explore, such as scanning and imaging technologies. Due to significant errors in image acquisition, these technologies often fail to meet certification standards. They require more complex and personalized calibration to derive optimal parameters, or real-time adjustments based on other data dimensions, employing multi-round perceptual technologies such as implantable sensors. While this was previously entirely unsolvable, in the AI era, it represents a vertical domain with opportunities to invent new business systems.

However, for entrepreneurs to seize such transformative opportunities, it is inevitable that they must adopt a comprehensive approach rather than being content with developing single-point technologies.

Liu Wei:Adopt an additive mindset: approach system-wide transformation as a major solution provider. This does not require technology to be 100% mature from the outset, nor should it be confined to applying established technologies for simple tasks. Instead, collaborate with clients to propose highly challenging capabilities that address acute pain points and are unattainable by traditional systems or human effort alone, iterating continuously amid imperfection. For many industries, even the role of a major solution provider may fall short.

Baidu Ventures is now strongly encouraging entrepreneurs to explore becoming new types of clients, or to assess whether they can serve as vendors and technology providers by adopting the mindset of such clients.

Take Apple as an example. Three to five years ago, we invested heavily in agricultural AI projects in the United States. These companies have now generally pivoted, becoming the clients themselves. In the U.S., the traditional clients in the agricultural sector are fragmented mid-sized farms. Merely empowering one link in the value chain is insufficient; if clients lack capabilities in other areas, they cannot rapidly leverage their advantages. This logic mirrors why SaaS has struggled to gain traction in China.

Liu Wei:In U.S. agricultural projects, it is typically necessary to first engage these clients as pilot partners. From the perspective of a major service provider, an end-to-end solution should be designed—determining how many days in advance and from which regions to harvest apples based on downstream supply chain orders, as well as optimizing irrigation schedules. This involves digitally configuring the entire apple production process and building models to enhance farm operational efficiency. In effect, this establishes a new apple brand.

This is, in fact, a significant systemic advantage of AI, as it enables digital configuration at every stage of apple production.

Assuming there are 6,657,423 apples in the entire orchard, which one should I pick? If relying on manual labor, the selection would certainly be based on criteria such as “appearing very red.” However, by leveraging AI technology and bubble sort algorithms, I can precisely identify and pick the 50th red apple to ensure timely delivery. Moreover, this approach can reduce pesticide application and water consumption.

Liu Wei:As one of the oldest scientific disciplines in human history, biomedical science has accelerated its development in recent years, driven by both microscopic visualization and macroscopic data accumulation. The precise perception, multi-dimensional decision-making, rapid learning, and complex system control capabilities brought by artificial intelligence are accelerating humanity’s ability to understand physiological changes at finer spatial and temporal granularities, enabling earlier disease detection, precise subtyping, and the delivery of precise, personalized treatments.

As a fund investing in frontier AI technologies and their applications, Baidu Ventures (BV) holds strong confidence in the transformation of the healthcare and biotechnology industry driven by the continuous maturation of underlying technologies over the next decade.

In the AI era, we will accelerate this development through investment. For instance, we will enhance the spatial dimensions, granularity, and dynamic perception capabilities by deploying new equipment at levels such as 3D imaging, super-resolution, and single-cell intervention. Meanwhile, we will improve cognitive understanding by leveraging novel algorithms like graph computing and generative adversarial networks, capitalizing on advantages such as high performance and low power consumption. Ultimately, consistent with our objectives in other industries, we aim to drive the emergence of new business systems and efficiency models. Examples include cell robots with programmable antibody recognition serving as a “new lymphatic system,” and a novel surgical operational system that combines pre-emptive, precise compensation using in vivo and ex vivo sensors with surgical robots.

Liu Wei:Medical robots are one of the keywords for this competition; in fact, there are many others, such as AI-driven drug discovery, single-cell omics, and innovative health insurance.

BV aims to be the earliest investor in ambitious, disruptive innovation teams, continuously increasing its investment thereafter to help them transform the industry together.

Over the past two years since our establishment, we have visited countless laboratories across China and the United States, investing in more than 30 cutting-edge biomedicine companies. These include Sherlock Biosciences, a world-leading CRISPR diagnostics platform founded by Feng Zhang’s laboratory; Qitan Technology, a next-generation nanopore sequencing platform independently developed by a team of Chinese scientists; CytoVale, which leverages single-cell morphological data acquisition for precise and rapid sepsis detection; Rootpath, a Harvard/MIT-affiliated company specializing in personalized precision medicine with TCR-T therapies; Engine Biosciences, a drug discovery platform combining high-throughput single-cell wet-lab experiments with AI algorithms; and Subtle Medical, the first medical imaging company to receive FDA clearance for AI-enhanced medical imaging. We are delighted to have witnessed their rapid growth.

Liu Wei:BV aims to leverage its cross-border “one team” investment model spanning China and the U.S. to combine America’s strengths in cutting-edge technological innovation and mature industrial supply chains with China’s rapidly evolving industrial landscape, thereby delivering differentiated insights and enhanced support for entrepreneurs.

Many cutting-edge biological data technologies we have invested in the United States can quickly gain traction by leveraging the mature demand in the U.S. market for laboratory and pharmaceutical services, and then achieve rapid growth through China’s diagnosis-intervention-service market, thereby carving out distinct development paths.

Ren Bobing:“Baidu Ventures takes a meticulous approach to post-investment management. Its in-depth research and reflection on global technological advancements and cutting-edge business models, coupled with frequent collaborations and discussions with industry leaders, empower it to confidently drive the strategic planning, product design, and R&D direction of its portfolio companies.”

Ren Bobing, Vice President of Investment at Baidu Ventures

Previously, BV also developed products such as the “Odyssey Program” and the AI Academy to assist portfolio companies with talent acquisition and executive development, thereby supporting them in more firmly pursuing disruptive industrial revolutions and technological R&D.

Ren Bobing:BV holds deep respect for the industry dynamics of the healthcare sector, recognizing the need to forge strong partnerships with top-tier players in the medical industry. By passing on experience, providing resource support, and offering strategic insights, BV helps outstanding entrepreneurs access equally excellent resource platforms, establish in-depth connections with global industry companies, understand industry pain points, secure pilot orders, and chart more refined development paths.

BV is honored to partner with Medtronic, which brings nearly 70 years of experience in the healthcare sector, covering more than 70 disease areas, and possesses extensive expertise and unique insights into the healthcare market. BV believes that industry giants like Medtronic provide the most fertile ground for the technological translation and practical implementation of cutting-edge medical startups. We hope this collaboration will contribute to medical innovation in China.

Ren Bobing:We believe that medical robots are not merely devices, but new business systems in the AI era. Although there are some large companies in certain sectors, we believe that with high-granularity or multi-axis sensing, along with the enhanced computational and cognitive capabilities of the AI era, the form factors and business models of medical robots will undergo significant transformation.

We observe that many entrepreneurs in China still rely on the path of replicating mature overseas products, but such micro-innovations centered on import substitution may face crushing competition from large enterprises.

The advantage of entrepreneurs lies in disruptive innovation. Therefore, through this competition, we aim to identify innovative solutions that combine imagination with technical prowess. More importantly, we seek to empower the teams behind these solutions to transform the future of healthcare, accelerate the development of an entrepreneurial ecosystem for medical robotics, promote cross-disciplinary integration and resource aggregation in this emerging field, and provide tangible support to entrepreneurs in this sector.

Beyond the medical and biotechnology sectors, Baidu Ventures (BV) is also establishing joint laboratories with leading industrial companies in fields such as manufacturing. When selecting industry partners, BV places greater emphasis on shared AI philosophies and complementary expertise in industry and technical insights, thereby better supporting entrepreneurs.

Ren Bobing:In recent years, we have observed increasingly tight and rapid advancements in interdisciplinary convergence. Particularly in the medical and biological fields, this is evident in the natural integration of drug development with artificial intelligence algorithms, the seamless combination of stem cells and microfluidics, and the internal-external collaboration between surgical robots and micro-nano sensors.

“Odyssey Plan” is an initiative by Baidu Ventures (BV) to proactively identify a cohort of young talents with boundless potential in response to the transformative impact of AI on healthcare and life sciences, collaborating with them to explore greater possibilities in research, investment, and entrepreneurship. These individuals align with our vision of future investors and entrepreneurs.

The fundamental goal of venture capital (VC) remains unchanged: to invest in the highest-quality enterprises. However, in the AI era, product and industry transformations are becoming increasingly profound. This has raised the bar for both entrepreneurs and investors, demanding deeper technical understanding, sharper industry insights, and more innovative thinking. Consequently, the traditional VC approach of merely sourcing and discussing deals is no longer sufficient to meet return-on-investment expectations or to provide meaningful support to entrepreneurs.

At our core, we aspire to be entrepreneurs among entrepreneurs, joining forces with a group of exceptional individuals to shape what we envision as the AI era.