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Coco Feng

Chinese internet search giant Baidu on Thursday reported flat second-quarter revenue amid a slowing economy, while its artificial intelligence (AI) business continued to scale up.
The Beijing-based firm’s total revenue in the three months ended June was basically flat from last year – down 0.4 per cent to 33.9 billion yuan (US$4.7 billion), compared with analysts’ 34-billion-yuan projection, as economic headwinds slowed advertisers’ spending on online marketing services.
Net income rose 5 per cent to 5.5 billion yuan, up from analysts’ estimate of 5.06 billion yuan.
Baidu’s Hong Kong-listed shares closed up 1.71 per cent to HK$86.45 on Thursday.

Although overall revenue edged down, Baidu said in a statement on Thursday that its non-marketing operations grew 10 per cent year on year to 7.5 billion yuan in the second quarter, “mainly driven by AI Cloud business”.
“AI Cloud continued to accelerate in the second quarter, offsetting the ongoing macro headwinds for online marketing revenue,” Baidu co-founder, chairman and chief executive Robin Li Yanhong said in the statement.
“Throughout all layers of our AI technology stack and with the rapid adoption of applications built on top of Ernie, we are scaling AI to address real-world problems and generate substantial value both for external customers and our own product portfolio.”
At Thursday’s earnings call, Li said AI Cloud revenue reached 5.1 billion yuan in the June quarter. Generative AI-related revenue contributed nearly 9 per cent to that total, up from 6.9 per cent the previous quarter.
Baidu chief financial officer Rong Luo, meanwhile, said the company expects “to maintain strong momentum” in its AI Cloud business, which includes the Ernie large language model (LLM) family and its applications. LLMs are the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT and Baidu’s own Ernie Bot.


Baidu’s robotaxi service, Apollo Go, in June started offering fully autonomous operations across the entire municipality of Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province.
Apollo Go, which now offers huge discounts to lure passengers, provided 899,000 rides in the June quarter, up 26 per cent from a year earlier. The cumulative rides surpassed 7 million as of July 28.
Baidu’s other business maintained steady growth, including the main search app that saw its monthly active users grow 4 per cent to 703 million in June. However, some other business segments did not meet expectations, especially video service iQiyi that reported a 5 per cent year-on-year revenue decrease to 7.4 billion yuan last quarter.


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Baidu

Baidu posts flat second-quarter revenue as sluggish economy slowed advertising spending

Signage at Baidu’s headquarters in Beijing. Photo: Bloomberg

A robotaxi, developed as part of Baidu’s Apollo Go autonomous driving project, seen on the road in Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province. Photo: AFP

Baidu, SenseTime lead China’s market for business-focused large language models, says IDC

Private company investments into LLMs are still in the early stage, and many are adopting a wait-and-see approach. Photo: Shutterstock Images

The Baidu logo seen during the company’s Create conference in Shenzhen, China, April 16, 2024. Photo: Bloomberg

More than 600 million people in mainland China are now using LLMs. Photo: Shutterstock Images

Chinese Big Tech to see big AI gains in social, educational and office use, report says

Artificial intelligence adoption is having an impact on hardware sales, as smartphone and PC makers look to AI-capable chips to help boost sales. Photo: Shutterstock

Baidu Maps reports brief service outage amid autonomous driving push on Chinese roads

Baidu has reached a deal with Tesla to provide the US carmaker with mapping software for its electric vehicles. Photo: Handout

The Baidu logo seen during the Baidu Create conference in Shenzhen, April 16, 2024. Photo: Bloomberg

In Wuhan, driverless taxis offer a peek into the future of intracity transport in China

Illustration: Henry Wong

A Baidu Apollo Go self-driving car picks up a passenger in Wuhan, Hubei province, July 12, 2024.  Photo: Coco Feng

An Apollo Go car, the self-driving ride-hailing service of Baidu, takes to the road in Wuhan, Hubei province, July 12, 2024. Photo: Coco Feng

A safety operator sits in the driver’s seat of an Apollo Go robotaxi as the vehicle travels to Wuhan Tianhe International Airport in Wuhan, July 13, 2024. Photo: Coco Feng

An Apollo Go driverless car on the road in Wuhan, July 12, 2024. Photo: Coco Feng

‘Too many’ AI models in China: Baidu CEO warns of wasted resources, lack of applications

Baidu CEO Robin Li speaks at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on July 4, 2024, warning that the country is wasting resources tweaking foundational models while failing to build more practical applications. Photo: AFP

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The Chinese internet search giant’s second-quarter revenue reached US$4.7 billion, a slight 0.4 per cent dip from a year ago


The Chinese internet search giant’s second-quarter revenue reached US$4.7 billion, a slight 0.4 per cent dip from a year ago.
