Baidu Ventures, which brands itself BV百度风投 and in English as Baidu Venture or Baidu Ventures, is a corporate-backed venture capital firm initiated by Baidu. It is a corporate venture arm rather than an independent partnership in origin: China Daily reported on 16 September 2016 that Baidu was setting up the fund with an initial $200 million and with Baidu co-founder Robin Li as chairman of the venture capital firm, and the firm's own boilerplate describes it as 由百度发起、专业团队管理的独立风险投资机构 (an independent venture capital institution initiated by Baidu and managed by a professional team) whose limited partners include Baidu together with other industrial and financial institutions. It runs separately from Baidu's own investment and M&A team, a distinction the firm's CEO restated in February 2025. Its stated focus at launch was early-stage artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality. Its CEO described it in a November 2023 interview as an artificial-intelligence themed fund, verbatim: 我们是以人工智能为主题的基金, with holdings across industry, agriculture, energy, transport and healthcare in addition to generative AI. It has raised both US dollar and RMB funds and its own boilerplate has described simultaneous operation from Beijing and San Francisco.
2016
Baidu announces at Baidu World on 16 September 2016 that it is setting up a venture capital firm, Baidu Venture, with an initial $200 million fund focused on early-stage artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality, with Robin Li as its chairman and operating independently of Baidu's existing investment and M&A team.
2016
The operating entity 北京百度投资管理有限公司 (Beijing Baidu Investment Management Co., Ltd.) is registered on 18 March 2016, per the 36氪创投平台 institution profile.
2017
Baidu announces on 6 February 2017 that former Legend Star partner 刘维 (Liu Wei) joins Baidu as a vice president and becomes CEO of Baidu Ventures, alongside partners 齐玉杰 (Qi Yujie), a co-founder and former CEO of Domob, and 蔡薇 (Cai Wei), formerly an executive director at Goldman Sachs and a partner at TA Associates; Sina reported this completed the core team.
2018
钛媒体 reports that in 2018 Baidu Ventures raised a second fund of nearly RMB 2 billion, verbatim: 2018年，百度风投成功募集到近20亿人民币的二期基金 (20亿 = 20 x 100,000,000 = RMB 2,000,000,000).
2019
The firm's boilerplate, as carried in a 20 September 2019 Forbes China piece republished on 163.com, states it manages three US dollar and RMB funds totalling US$500 million, verbatim: 目前，BV百度风投管理着五亿美元规模的三支美元和人民币基金 (5亿美元 = 5 x 100,000,000 = US$500,000,000).
2020
钛媒体 reports that at the end of 2020 高雪 (Gao Xue) took over as CEO and managing partner while founding CEO 刘维 (Liu Wei) moved to build the AI life-science company 百图生科 (BioMap).
2025
CEO 高雪 (Gao Xue) publicly explains on 9 February 2025 why the firm did not invest in DeepSeek and states, verbatim: 百度风投是 BV 百度风投，不是百度投资部门.
2026
The firm continues to invest: 投资界 lists ten Baidu Ventures investment events between March and July 2026, and Sina Finance reported on 10 April 2026 that 百度BV风投 followed on as an existing shareholder in 生数科技's near RMB 2 billion Series B (近20亿元, that is 20 x 100,000,000 = RMB 2,000,000,000), led by Alibaba Cloud with RMB 700 million (7亿元 = 7 x 100,000,000).