Baidu has once again made it clear that Artificial intelligence (AI) is among its top business priorities. China's Google clone announced on Friday that it would set up its second research and development (R&D) facility in the Silicon Valley to help the company get an edge in the AI sector.

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Baidu's new R&D facility will hire 150 employees, which will add up 200 employees working at the existing facility in Sunnyvale, California. The two R&D facilities will be situated miles apart.

"It is becoming increasingly important in Baidu's global strategy as a base for attracting world-class talent," the company said in the statement.

The latest announcement comes just days after the company' leading AI scientist, Andrew Ng, announced that he is stepping down from his position. The news did not go down too well with the markets as Baidu's stocks took a huge beating at the NASDAQ.

Analyst's claim that Ng's resignation is likely to scuttle Baidu's AI projects. The search engine giant considers the AI to be immensely important for opening new revenue streams and regaining the ground lost to its arch rivals like Tencent and Alibaba. Baidu has nearly 1,300 engineers on AI projects working across sites in China and the U.S.

Last year, the search engine giant's ad revenues took a big hit due to a series of scandals where the NASDAQ-listed company was accused of excessively indulging in paid results. The company virtually enjoys a monopoly in China's huge search engine market after Google decided to quit the Chinese due to strict censorship rules.  

TagsBaidu, china, Silcon Valley, Artificial Intelligence