Baidu says Kuku AI hits 40M global monthly active users

Baidu is positioning Kuku as a consumer-scale agent rather than a research demo, which matters because distribution, not model quality, is usually the bottleneck for AI office tools. The split between 40 million global and 10 million overseas users suggests the domestic base still carries the number, so the overseas rebrand to Kooko reads as a deliberate attempt to build a second, less home-market-dependent funnel. Whether that overseas share keeps growing without Baidu's domestic channels behind it is the open question.