Baidu competes with its US rivals by funding $1.52 billion on autonomous cars project. Baidu has a vision for 2020 to hit the roads with 100 self-driving projects that work on artificial intelligence (AI).

China’s Google “Baidu Inc” unveils its new product Apollo 1.5, an upgraded version of its Apollo open-source software for completely autonomous cars. As part of a wider plan to fasten its technical development, they announced a $1.52 billion (10 billion yuan) autonomous driving fund in the Apollo 1.5 launch.

Apollo 1.5 that comes with the core capabilities such as cloud simulation, obstacle perception, planning, end-to-end deep learning, and HD maps has attracted 70 partners from various fields across the globe where it was 50 in July when the initial version of Apollo was launched. Despite facing many challenges from Beijing traffic police on local regulations, Baidu has seen a rapid growth in the partner ecosystem as Apollo has attracted many big shots that include ROS, Neousys Technology, Hyundai Motor, esd electronics and so on; and even the startups such as iDriver Technologies and Momenta.

They got a bigger dream and made it as a vision to be met in next three years. Apollo Fund has sown the seed to achieve the Baidu’s vision of 2020.