Chinese tech giant Baidu has begun testing the country’s first metaverse-powered platform, Xirang, with a group of selected users. The company aims to capitalize on its artificial intelligence capabilities in the fast-growing metaverse space.

The app will be accessible for the users starting Monday during the company’s annual flagship developers’ conference, Baidu Create. It is also China’s first metaverse conference, held virtually via the platform. Xirang stands for ‘land of hope’ and will enable up to 100,000 people to simultaneously participate in the 3D VR conference.

Ma Jie, Baidu’s Vice President and Head of Xirang, remarked that immersive real-time experiences, interactive sound, and visual effects are the three most prominent roadblocks for developing the metaverse.

“We need to make breakthroughs in several key technologies, such as safe, self-independent, and intelligent cloud computing technologies, as well as continue to innovate in artificial intelligence, edge computing, virtual reality, and augmented reality while building up a content ecosystem,” Ma said.

“Currently, the metaverse is still in a very early stage. Its development is gradual, and we need a community and a long time to build it,” Ma added. He further explained that there would be no virtual currencies and transactions concerning virtual assets within the platform.

Several Chinese tech giants and startups have made massive strides in the metaverse space. For instance, the Chinese tech behemoth ByteDance, parent of the popular short video app TikTok, acquired Pico, a Chinese VR headset maker, back in August.

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