To support enterprises' digitalization and intellectualization, Baidu AI Cloud announced an upgrade on its strategy and infrastructure to empower the real economy for development with better quality, the tech company said in Beijing on Thursday.

Based on digitalization and powered by AI technology, Baidu AI Cloud aims to integrate its service into more industries, Wang Haifeng, chief technology officer of Baidu, said at 2021 ABC Summit, an annual event held by Baidu for discussion on AI, big data, and cloud computing.

In addition to fields like finance, transportation, and medical services that have been widely used in cloud service and AI technology, Baidu is exploring new fields for application. 

Cooperated with China's national diving team, the company made the country's first 3D+AI diving training system to help athletes' training be more effective with accurate motion capture and data analysis. 

In many cases, technology development comes with long-term investment and even many doubts, but it would be on the fast track once it enters the application phase, Robin Li, founder, and CEO of Baidu, said at the summit.

In the next decade, there will be eight key technologies set to transform society, including autonomous driving, digital city operation, machine translation, biocomputing, DL frameworks, knowledge management, AI chip & smart personal assistant, he said.

Taking autonomous driving as an example, he said in the next two to three years, Baidu plans to launch a driverless ride-hailing service in 30 cities in China, and the company aims to make the robotaxi service cheaper than the current ride-hailing service.

As the cloud infrastructure services spending in China reached $6 billion in Q1 2021, the country has the second-largest cloud infrastructure services market, according to data from the technology market analyst firm Canalys.

China's tech giants, including Baidu, Alibaba, Huawei, and Tencent, whose cloud business accounts for a combined 80 percent global market share, are gearing up investment in cloud business with different strategies.

Baidu introduced the "ABC", which refers to AI, big data, and cloud computing, in 2016 to seek better integration of these three sectors.

Alibaba and Huawei proposed "cloud computing, IoT, AI" and "inclusive AI" respectively in 2018.