Baidu beats estimates as AI cloud surge offsets ad slump

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:01]Baidu beat market estimates for quarterly revenue on Monday. The Chinese tech giant saw strong demand for its cloud computing services, and that helped offset ongoing weakness in its advertising business. Tech firms in China have seen business improve due to enterprise adoption of AI. It's raised demand for cloud computing capacity needed to run AI workloads. Baidu, which is China's largest search engine operator, has scored big from its strength in cloud demand. Revenue from Baidu's core AI power business jumped just under 50% to $2 billion. That made it more than half the company's general business revenue. The online advertising business reported total revenue of $1.8 billion, well down from a year earlier.

[00:00:42]Companies have cut back spending on marketing in a challenging domestic economy. China has seen a long slump in its property market and weak consumer demand. Total revenue in the first quarter ended March stood at $4.7 billion, just ahead of analyst estimates.

[00:00:57]Investors liked what they heard, and the company's US-listed shares rose more than 3% in pre-market trading.