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Baidu exec: Forcing AI on employees backfires; we give them $140 to play with chatbots

Baidu is taking an unconventional approach to getting its employees to embrace AI: pay them to play with it.

In a recent interview, Shen Dou, Executive Vice President of Baidu Group and President of Baidu Intelligent Cloud, revealed that the company gives each employee a monthly allowance of 1,000 yuan (about $140) to freely experience various mainstream large models on the market. There are no restrictions on how they use it, and it's not tied to any performance evaluation.

"Forcing people to use AI in the office is hard to yield results," Shen said. Instead, Baidu relies on positive guidance and incentives. The logic is simple: once employees personally experience how AI tools can boost their efficiency, they'll naturally develop a habit of using them regularly.

This employee welfare policy is still in effect and is part of Baidu's broader strategy to lower the barrier for trying out AI tools. The company has not set any mandatory usage requirements.

AI revenue hits a milestone

The bet on AI seems to be paying off. In the first quarter of 2026, Baidu's AI revenue grew 49% year-over-year and accounted for 52% of total revenue. It's the first time in Baidu's history that AI revenue has exceeded half of its total revenue, underscoring the growing importance of AI to the company's bottom line.

Shen predicted that the large-scale deployment of general intelligent agents and industry-specific agents will accelerate significantly, with noticeable mass deployment expected in the second half of 2026. He believes that in the future, 90% of work will involve deep participation and assistance from AI, but not complete replacement of humans.

The next three years: a crucial window

Shen described the next three years as a critical period for AI companies. During this time, AI firms and unicorns will increasingly recognize the advantages of full-stack capabilities. But Baidu Intelligent Cloud isn't alone in this race—competitors are also actively enhancing their full-stack capabilities. For Baidu, this is both an opportunity to leverage its strengths and a challenge due to heightened competition.

A new metric for the AI era

When it comes to measuring success in the AI era, Baidu founder Robin Li offered a fresh perspective at the Create 2026 Baidu AI Developer Conference in May. Li proposed that the key metric might be Daily Active Agents (DAA), analogous to Daily Active Users (DAU) in the mobile internet era.

He pointed out that the current widely accepted metric is Token consumption, but Tokens don't necessarily represent the final state. "Tokens represent cost rather than revenue, measuring input rather than output," Li said. When humans enter the agent era, the prosperity of a platform and ecosystem should be measured more by DAA—focusing on how many agents are working for humans and delivering results. This, he argued, is more aligned with value and essence compared to meaningless Token consumption.

Key Points

  • Baidu gives each employee a monthly 1,000 yuan allowance to freely try out mainstream large models, with no strings attached.
  • The company believes forcing AI adoption is ineffective; instead, it relies on positive guidance and incentives.
  • Baidu's AI revenue grew 49% year-over-year in Q1 2026, accounting for 52% of total revenue—a historic first.
  • Shen Dou predicts mass deployment of AI agents will accelerate in the second half of 2026.
  • Robin Li proposes Daily Active Agents (DAA) as a new metric for the AI era, replacing Token consumption.