Photo: VCG

 Chinese tech giant Baidu reported on Thursday better-than-expected results on the second quarter with its total revenue reaching 1.4 billion yuan ($4.86 billion), an increase of 20 percent year-over-year.

Baidu Core delivered another strong quarter, with revenue growing 27 percent year-over-year to 24.0 billion yuan ($3.72 billion), boosted by AI cloud growing 71 percent year-over-year.

For Q3 of 2021, Baidu expects revenues to be between 30.6 and 33.5 billion yuan, representing a growth rate of 8 percent, to 19 percent year-over-year, assuming that Baidu Core’s revenue will grow between 9 and 20 percent year-over-year.

The fiscal report recorded a net loss of 583 million yuan which is related to a mark-to-market adjustment on Kuaishou Technology. 

Baidu ranked the No. 1 AI cloud provider again, according to IDC's 2020 China's public cloud market report. Baidu’s deep learning platform became the most widely used in China, according to an IDC report in June 2021. On the same track, the PaddlePaddle developer community grew to 3.6 million, up 62 percent year-over-year, with 130,000 subscribed businesses.

Coverage of Apollo ACE smart transportation grew to 20 cities in June 2021, a four-fold rise from a year ago, based on contracts over 10 million yuan. 

Apollo L4 autonomous driving accumulated 7.5 million test miles, up 152 percent year-over-year. The company has received 278 autonomous driving permits.

Baidu introduced Apollo's 5th generation robotaxi vehicles in June with a 60 percent drop in cost per mile.

Baidu is a Chinese Internet search service provider. Its core business mainly provides products and services based on search, information flow and other online marketing services, as well as new AI applications. 

Baidu was listed on NASDAQ in 2005 and went to Hong Kong for a second listing in March this year.

Global Times