(Yicai) Nov. 12 -- Chinese internet giant Baidu has officially launched its large language model trading platform Ciyuansuo at the 2026 Baidu World Conference, aiming to address the issues of a mixed-quality model market and users’ lack of trust when choosing models.

Ciyuansuo has been operating for one month, Baidu’s founder Robin Li said at the conference today. More than 100 resource providers have already joined Ciyuansuo, which has reached 50 million average daily application programming interface calls and 700 billion average daily used tokens, he added.

“Ciyuansuo is an exchange for LLMs, enabling enterprises and even individuals to easily find, purchase, and use trustworthy model tokens,” Li explained.

In the first three quarters of the year, a new model was released almost every day, sometimes even multiple ones in a day, Li noted, adding that the surge in model supply did not translate into better user experience. “After all the picking and choosing, people still don’t feel confident or dare to use them.”

In other words, the LLM market lacked an infrastructure that could serve as a ‘credit intermediary,’ and that is exactly where the value of an exchange lies. According to information disclosed at the conference, Ciyuansuo focuses on two core capabilities: authenticity verification and credit assessment.

The authenticity verification function uses technical methods, such as model fingerprint matching, capability testing, and performance and availability checks, to validate model resources.

Meanwhile, the credit assessment function establishes a credit rating for model providers through regular spot checks, dial tests, and full-chain, real-time call monitoring, offering customers neutral, credible, and transparent model trading services.

This means LLM providers now have something akin to a “credit record” in the trading process, and buyers can make decisions based on publicly transparent ratings.

As competition in the artificial intelligence industry intensifies, securing a place in the model trading market may hold more potential than simply releasing another LLM. After all, an exchange's value has never depended on the traded assets.

Baidu also unveiled other achievements at the conference. In foundational models, the company released Ernie 5.5 Flash Preview, and in application models, it launched the Ernie Lightning deep thinking model and the Ernie-Wizshot-Me, which were simultaneously deployed on Baidu Intelligent Cloud's Qianfan LLM Platform, opening API services to enterprise customers and partners.

Moreover, digital-human agent Baidu Yijing introduced Short Comic Drama Studio at the conference, covering an end-to-end creation workflow from concept and script-writing to storyboarding and final production.

On Baidu Yijing, creators can localize verified works by adapting plots, characters, and scenes for overseas markets in one click, helping short comic dramas go global. Based on Baidu’s self-developed video generation model, it costs only 20 Chinese cents (3 US Cents) per second.

Editor: Futura Costaglione