Beijing-based non-profit AI research institute developing large foundation models and open-source embodied-AI systems for robotics.
The Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI), also known as the Zhiyuan Institute, is a Chinese non-profit artificial intelligence research institute founded on November 14, 2018 with support from the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission and the Zhongguancun Science Park Management Committee. BAAI conducts research on foundational AI technology and original innovation, gathering AI researchers to work on core technologies, theory, talent development and industry ecosystem building. The institute is known for large-scale pre-trained foundation models, including the Wu Dao multimodal language models, with WuDao 2.0 reaching 1.75 trillion parameters, and the Emu series of multimodal models such as Emu3, which tokenizes images, text and video into a single discrete space and trains a single transformer with next-token prediction. For robotics and embodied intelligence, BAAI released RoboOS, described as a cross-ontology embodied brain-collaboration framework, and the open-source embodied brain RoboBrain at the 2025 Zhongguancun Forum, advancing models that connect AI reasoning to physical robot control.
The institute also develops and open-sources datasets, model libraries and evaluation tools that support the broader AI and robotics research community. As a research institute rather than a commercial vendor, BAAI focuses on advancing AI capabilities, releasing open models, and supporting the embodied-AI and robotics ecosystem in China and internationally. Its work spans natural language processing, multimodal learning, and embodied intelligence, with embodied-AI and robot-brain frameworks representing its most directly robotics-relevant output.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
Multimodal foundation model unifying image, text and video via next-token prediction.
Company Facts
Founded
2018
Primary Role
Research Institute
Company Size
-
Primary Region
Asia-Pacific
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Grant / Non-profit
Funding Total
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