Baidu Reports Total Revenue Grew 20% YoY in Q2

Chinese internet giant Baidu on Thursday reported better-than-expected Q2 results with its total revenue reaching 31.4 billion yuan ($4.86 billion), increasing 20% year over year as of the end of June 30.

“Baidu Core delivered another strong quarter, powered by the fast growth of our new AI business.” said Robin Li, co-founder and CEO of Baidu. “We are excited about the opportunities to help different industries transform their business with AI and support our goal to become carbon neutral by 2030.”

For the third quarter of 2021, Baidu expects revenues to be between 30.6 billion yuan and 33.5 billion yuan, which assumes that Baidu Core revenue will grow between 9% and 20% year over year.

Baidu was ranked the No. 1 AI cloud provider again, according to IDC’s 2020 China’s public cloud market report.

“Baidu Core revenue grew 27% year over year in the second quarter, boosted by AI cloud growing 71% year over year,” said Herman Yu, the newly appointed CFO of Baidu. “Baidu‘s search and feed business was solid, and we continue to execute and lead on our new AI business, including AI cloud, autonomous driving and smart assistant.”

Baidu introduced Apollo’s 5th generation robotaxi vehicles in June, which again saw a 60% drop in cost per mile. Apollo Go ride hailing expanded into Guangzhou, Guangdong, its fourth city of operation, and provided 47K trips to the public, up 200% sequentially, in Q2.

SEE ALSO: Baidu Launches Apollo Robotaxi Ride-Hailing Pilot Program in Guangzhou

Great Wall Motors announced in June that its flagship WEY Mocha SUV will feature Apollo Automated Valet Parking (AVP) in its new release later this year.

In June, Baidu MAUs reached 580 million and daily logged in users reaching 77%. Managed Page reached 40% of Baidu Core Q2 online marketing revenue, as merchants adopted Baidu‘s hosted service with marketing cloud for their online storefront.

Baidu-backed iQIYI‘s subscribers reached 106.2 million in June 2021, serving as a strong foundation to support in-house production of entertainment blockbuster originals. Revenue from iQIYI was 7.6 billion yuan, increasing 3% year over year.