Tuesday, April 16

China’s Baidu Saw a Growth in Q2 Revenue with AI Boost

Baidu, the largest online search engine in China announced the reports of its total revenue and claimed that it hit 26.0 billion yuan ($3.93 billion), a rise of 32 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of this year.

Around 77 percent of the total net revenues arrived from the mobile revenue which was 72 percent for the same period last year.

“We had another strong quarter in Q2 with search exhibiting robust revenue growth driven by artificial intelligence-powered monetization capabilities and Baidu feed continuing strong traffic and monetization momentum,” said Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu.

The net income received by Baidu was 6.4 billion yuan, risen by 45 percent year-on-year in the second quarter. The online marketing revenues were 21.1 billion yuan, which saw a 25 percent rise year-on-year.

Earlier this year, the technology giant announced that it has begun a larger production of Apolong, which is China’s first fully autonomous minibus, in collaboration with Chinese bus manufacturer King Long. These buses are expected to be shipped to Japan early next year.

Herman Yu, the chief financial officer of Baidu, said, “We continue to increase our investments in AI-powered businesses with strong synergies and divest from non-core businesses. This has resulted in an acceleration of our revenue growth and allowed us to redeploy capital raised from non-core business divestitures to create long-term shareholder value and increase return on capital.”

Along with the King Kong partnership, Baidu has entered into a strategic association with China Mobile to cooperate in artificial intelligence (AI), big data and 5G, and come to an agreement together to explore opportunities in autonomous driving and internet of things at home.

Now for the next one that is the third quarter of 2018, Baidu is expecting revenues to reach around 27.37 billion yuan to 28.77 billion yuan, which would be a year-on-year increase of 23 percent to 30 percent.