Baidu Conference Call: Intelligent Cloud revenue increased by 14% year-on-year in Q2, the search business is accelerating its transformation to AI, and the daily usage of the Wenxin large model exceeds 600 million calls

Baidu Intelligent Cloud continues to grow rapidly, driving a slight positive growth in core business in the second quarter, while the overall revenue of the group remains relatively stable. Due to Baidu's accelerated investment in Baidu Search, the company's profitability has been temporarily affected, with a 8% year-on-year decrease in net profit in the second quarter.

During a later conference call, Baidu stated that it is accelerating the AI transformation of its search business by introducing AI-generated search results and interactive features to provide a richer and more personalized user experience.

Baidu has already launched features and tools such as multi-round interactions, image processing, and AI agents. The group's founder, chairman, and CEO, Robin Li, stated during the call:

Although these new features have not yet been monetized, they are the transformative force for the future success of search and AI. Baidu's strategic focus is to seize long-term growth opportunities, change the way search is used, and consolidate its leadership position in AI-driven search.

Regarding Intelligent Cloud, according to Baidu, the revenue of the Intelligent Cloud business in the second quarter reached 5.1 billion yuan, a 14% year-on-year growth. This growth is mainly driven by the increasing demand for AI-native applications and Baidu's leading position in AI infrastructure and model training platforms.

Robin Li also disclosed data related to the Wenxin Large Model:

The Wenxin Large Model is called more than 600 million times per day, processing approximately 1 trillion tokens of text per day, both of which are the highest in the country. Compared to the 50 million daily calls announced in Q4 of 2023, the number has grown more than 10 times in half a year. During the quarter, Baidu launched the more efficient Wenxin Large Model 4.0 Turbo and introduced multiple preferential policies.

In the second quarter, ERNIE Speed, ERNIE Lite, and ERNIE Tiny, three lightweight models, were made free, while the flagship models Wenxin Large Model 3.5 and 4.0 saw significant price reductions.

Baidu remains optimistic about the long-term growth of its Intelligent Cloud business and plans to continue driving innovation and application of AI technology to achieve sustainable revenue growth.

Regarding autonomous driving, Baidu stated that through the operation of autonomous driving taxis by Apollo Go in Wuhan, the cost per vehicle in the second quarter decreased by more than half year-on-year.

Baidu stated that it will continue to invest in intelligent driving technology, especially in autonomous driving taxi services, to achieve broader commercial operations.

According to the financial report, orders for Apollo Go autonomous driving increased by 26% year-on-year in the second quarter, and Baidu has begun large-scale unmanned road testing of the latest RT6 vehicles