On November 12, 2024, Baidu launched a pair of glasses with a built-in artificial intelligence assistant, providing a Chinese rival to Meta Ray-Ban glasses, which have achieved rare success in artificial intelligence-driven hardware.
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BEIJING – China’s tech giants Baidu Third-quarter revenue reported on Thursday fell 3% year-on-year, but exceeded market expectations amid the growth of the artificial intelligence cloud.
Revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30 was $4.78 billion.
Baidu noted that its non-online marketing revenue grew 12% to $1.1 billion, driven primarily by its artificial intelligence cloud business.
The company’s U.S.-listed shares fell nearly 4% in pre-market trading after the results were announced.
Analysts expect the company to report the following for the current quarter, according to estimates from London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG):
- income: US$4.63 billion
- net income: $857.17 million
Baidu has report Revenue 34.45 billion yuan (US$4.75 billion), net profit 6.68 billion yuan Third quarter of 2023.
Beijing-based Baidu operates one of China’s main web browser search engines, as well as a popular mapping application. The company also sells cloud computing services. Internet marketing accounts for a large portion of the company’s revenue.
Baidu CEO Robin Li said in the financial report that the growth of artificial intelligence cloud business offset the impact of “continued weakness” in Baidu’s online marketing field, and commented on the performance of the company’s Ernie generative artificial intelligence model and chatbot.
“Our powerful AI capabilities are gaining wider market acceptance, as evidenced by Ernie’s growing adoption,” he said.
Baidu has promoted its Ernie chatbot as a native alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is not yet available in China. Baidu said last week that Ernie bot currently has 430 million users, and the program accesses its underlying artificial intelligence model about 1.5 billion times a day, more than double the 600 million times in August.
“Despite short-term pressures, we remain steadfast in our AI-focused strategy and confident in our long-term development trajectory,” Lee said on Thursday. “As we further scale AI, we have the courage to look at how it drives Innovate and create value for consumers, businesses and society as a whole.”
The company also announced this month that Xiaodu AI Glasses Sales will begin in the first half of next year. The wearable device comes with at least one lens and uses Ernie’s artificial intelligence capabilities as well as Baidu’s mapping and search capabilities. While Baidu has yet to reveal pricing, the product is widely expected to be a Chinese alternative to Meta’s popular products Ray-Ban smart glasses.
Baidu announced a management rotation last month, with He Junjie, the former head of the Mobile Ecosystem Group, taking over. Become interim financial officer of the companyand former CFO Luo Rong became the leader of the mobile department.
“The artificial intelligence cloud continued to show healthy and sustainable development in the third quarter,” he said in the financial report. “At the same time, Apollo Go’s operations continued to make progress, strengthening our confidence in the effectiveness of the fully autonomous ride-hailing business model. “
Apollo Go, which operates Baidu’s robotaxi business, reported a 20% surge in rides in the third quarter compared with the same period last year. In the third quarter, the average number of rides per month increased to 329,333, higher than 287,500 people in the first half of the yearcalculated according to CNBC.
