China's Baidu Inc. has partnered with a Guangdong-based furniture maker and an artificial intelligence start-up to launch an artificial intelligence-based home package retailer and the team kicked off operations with the opening of eight experience-based smart home stores. Yihua Lifestyle Technology Co., which makes flooring and furniture, and Beijing-based Xiaocong Smart Technology Co., which creates smart appliances, joined Baidu to open the Yihua retail centers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhengzhou in Henan province, reported tech news website DoNews. The parties plan to cooperate further to open 18 similar experience halls nationwide this year and in the future, create 300 outlets that combine real estate, elderly care, and community lifestyle stores to install smart home solutions in over 30,000 apartments. Under the deal, Baidu provides its DuerOS digital assistant as the control center for the smart home, while Xiaocong brings in connected home equipment such as lighting, sockets, curtains and door locks. Yihua provides the display venues.

Nvidia and Baidu have agreed to collaborate on the incorporation of artificial intelligence in a cloud-to-car autonomous vehicle platform, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said Wednesday at the Baidu World Conference in Beijing. The companies plan to integrate Baidu's cloud platform and mapping technology with Nvidia's self-driving computing platform. They will work together to create solutions for high-definition maps, Level 3 autonomous vehicle control and automated parking. "We're going to bring together the technical capabilities and the expertise in AI and the scale of two world-class AI companies to build the self-driving car architecture from end-to-end, from top-to-bottom, from the cloud to the car," Jen-Hsun said. "We can start applying these capabilities to solve the grand challenges of AI, one of which is intelligent machines," he added.