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Baidu's Wu Tian Exits, But OCR2 Just Ate 3,600 Pages

Baidu Confirms Wu Tian's Departure, but Tech March Continues

Rumors swirled today that Wu Tian, Vice President of Baidu Group and Deputy Director of Baidu Research, had packed her bags. A Baidu PR manager confirmed on WeChat Moments that Wu Tian's tenure has indeed ended—while quickly adding that Baidu's technical work is still humming along.

And the company has a fresh proof point. Just two days earlier, on October 27, Baidu released and open-sourced Wenxin Unlimited OCR2. This isn't your garden-variety OCR upgrade. It's the world's first document parsing system that handles documents of any page count—pushing the old limit from dozens of pages to, well, "unlimited." The model now claims state-of-the-art status.

How unlimited is unlimited? In tests, OCR2 parsed all seven Harry Potter books in a single pass—more than 3,600 pages—while keeping accuracy and processing efficiency high even as the document length ballooned. That's a leap into what Baidu calls the OCR 3.0 era.

What's Behind the Executive Shuffle?

Wu Tian's departure didn't happen overnight. She stepped down as head of the foundation model R&D department back in May and later took on the Deputy Director role at Baidu Research. Work in the foundation model area, meanwhile, hasn't skipped a beat. A source close to Baidu says new progress on the Wenxin model will be announced next week.

So what does this mean for Baidu's AI ambitions? The company is clearly betting that open-source releases and technical breakthroughs will keep the momentum going—executive changes notwithstanding. In the fast-moving world of large models and document intelligence, Baidu seems determined to stay in the race.

Key Points

  • Wu Tian, Baidu VP and Deputy Director of Baidu Research, has left the company; Baidu confirmed the departure.
  • Wenxin Unlimited OCR2 was open-sourced on October 27, enabling parsing of documents with any page count—tested on all seven Harry Potter books (3,600+ pages) in one go.
  • Wu Tian stepped down as foundation model R&D head in May; Baidu says foundation model work continues.
  • New Wenxin model updates are expected next week, according to a source close to Baidu.