Baidu jumps as the Chinese search giant reportedly plans to launch its own version of ChatGPT

• Baidu shares climbed Monday after Bloomberg reported the Chinese search engine company plans to launch a service similar to ChatGPT.
• Baidu is aiming to unveil the still-unnamed tool in March.

Baidu shares reached a nearly five-month high Monday following a Bloomberg report the Chinese internet search company plans to launch a service similar to ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot service that's surging in popularity across business and social settings.

Baidu is aiming to unveil the application in March, the report said, citing an unnamed source.

Shares of the company behind China's largest search engine rose as much as 3.2% in premarket trade to $143.45, the highest price since September 1. The stock in 2022 had lost 23% but in 2023 through Friday's session had gained roughly 22%.

Baidu, which has spent billions of dollars researching AI, plans to initially embed the still-unnamed tool into its main search services, Bloomberg reported. The application will deliver conversation-style search results similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Baidu's large-scale machine-learning model called Ernie will serve as the foundation of its ChatGPT-like tool.

Research organization OpenAI in November launched ChatGPT. The tool's ability to answer most questions in a detailed fashion has ignited a wave of experiments ranging from asking ChatGPT to answer investors' burning questions to seeing if it can pass graduate-level exams. Shares of BuzzFeed soared last week after the media company said it would publish content using AI from OpenAI.

Microsoft last week said it was extending its partnership with OpenAI through a "multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment". The software heavyweight didn't specify the investment amount. A Semafor report earlier this month said Microsoft was in talks to invest $10 billion in OpenAI.