In This Article:
Baidu shares jumped almost 4.5% during Wednesday trading in Hong Kong following expectations-beating revenue from the Chinese tech giant. Baidu is trying to solidify an early lead in the race to win China's AI market, starting with the launch of its ChatGPT-like ERNIE Bot earlier this year.
Baidu generated revenue of $4.7 billion for the three months ending Sept. 30, a 6% year-on-year increase. The company also earned $916 million in net income, compared to a $20.6 million loss for the same quarter last year.
“Our AI-centric business and product strategy should set the stage for sustained multi-year revenue and profit expansion within our ERNIE and ERNIE Bot ecosystem,” CEO Robin Li said in a statement on Tuesday.
Baidu and Li, also the company's founder, hope AI will revive the tech company's fortunes, after the company lost ground to competitors like Tencent and Alibaba. The company is primarily known for its search engine, but is now shifting to new sectors like automated driving and generative AI.
Baidu launched ERNIE earlier this year, though observers were underwhelmed by the presentation compared to its non-Chinese peers like Google and Microsoft. Yet the Chinese company has continued to update the model and its chatbot, releasing ERNIE 4.0 in October.
The tech company also shared details on its robotaxi service, named Apollo Go, which operates in major cities like Wuhan, Shenzhen and Beijing. The autonomous ride-hailing service carried 821,000 passengers last quarter, a 73% increase from a year ago.
China's race for AI
Baidu is part of a growing rush in China's tech sector to launch generative AI products, and arguably leading the way: The company is the only Chinese firm featured in Fortune's inaugural "AI Innovators" list, released on Tuesday, which highlights 50 companies at the forefront of AI.
The company's ERNIE bot is perhaps China's closest equivalent to OpenAI's ChatGPT, currently banned in China. The bot outperforms ChatGPT in several Chinese-language tasks, Baidu says.
Yet Baidu's big tech peers are also barreling into the space. Alibaba, Tencent and <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3227583/chinese-e-commerce-giant-jdcom-unveils-own-large-language-model-chatrhino-drive-increased-adoption">JD.com</a> have all announced their own large language models. (JD.com CEO Sandy Xu Ran is joining Baidu's board as an independent director, the company announced Tuesday). Several smaller AI companies and startups are also developing their own models: There are now over 130 large language models being developed in China today, according to one estimate.