Revenue for the three months ended June came to 31.3 billion yuan ($4.62 billion), slightly below the consensus estimate of 31.6 billion yuan from analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Net profit during the quarter amounted to 2.3 billion yuan.
Online marketing revenue, Baidu’s traditional mainstay, fell 19 percent to 13.1 billion yuan from a year earlier as advertisers remained cautious amid a sluggish macroeconomic environment.
To help mitigate the decline, revenue from AI-related operations – which include cloud, applications and marketing services – jumped 25 percent year-on-year to 12.5 billion yuan.
These efforts underscore Baidu’s rapid revenue turnaround: in the first quarter, AI-driven operations accounted for more than half of its overall business revenue for the first time.
AI cloud revenue grew 50 percent year-on-year to 7.3 billion yuan during the second quarter. AI applications rose 3 percent to 2.5 billion yuan, while AI marketing services stabilized at 2.6 billion yuan.
“While our online marketing business remains under pressure, the growing momentum in our core AI business reaffirms Baidu’s transformation from an Internet-centric company to an AI-first company,” Robin Li Yanhong, founder and CEO of Baidu, said in the earnings release.
