Article reprint source: New Fire
Author: Fumiko
Baidu has submitted the first report card on AI commercialization in the second half of the year.
After 242 days of rapid growth, Baidu's profits exceeded expectations
Baidu has returned to the center of the Internet stage again, riding the AI hot wheel. However, this time it is not just because of the big model, but because of Baidu's long-term deep cultivation of the AI industry ecosystem.
On November 21, 2023, Baidu released its third-quarter financial report for 2023. This is the first quarterly report submitted by Baidu since obtaining the large model service license in August.
The financial report shows that in the third quarter of 2023, Baidu Group's total revenue was 34.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6%; Baidu's core revenue was 26.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5%; not in accordance with US GAAP, net profit attributable to Baidu was 7.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23%. Both revenue and profit exceeded market expectations.
While most domestic manufacturers are still burning money or even telling stories, Baidu already has the ability to monetize. On the second day after the release of the financial report, (Fortune) also announced the first (Fortune Global Artificial Intelligence Innovators) Top 50 list, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Meta and Anthropic were on the list. Baidu, as the only Chinese company selected in the list, was on the list.
There is no doubt that Baidu's strength in the field of AI has been recognized by international organizations, which also means that Baidu is entering the international stage of AI innovation as a domestic leader.
The fast fish eats the slow fish, AI commercialization is king
In the field of science and technology, it is often said that "the faster ones win", and the faster fish eat the slower ones. When other companies just began to pay attention to big models, Baidu has already built the most mature basic big model in China. While other companies are still madly rolling up big models, Baidu has already started rolling up the actual application of big models.
A close look at Baidu's third-quarter financial report shows that the fulcrum for Baidu to commercialize the Wenxin big model is undoubtedly "AI native applications."
On the one hand, with AI-native thinking, Baidu has accelerated the in-depth integration of large models with existing businesses, and has transformed all products in the original mobile ecosystem such as search, office, and marketing to empower business innovation with AI. Especially since Baidu released its new AI native application on October 17, various data indicators of user volume and activity of its products such as Baidu New Library and Baidu Netdisk "Yunyiduo" have shown significant growth.
From the data, we can see that on Baidu App, 640,000 creators have created more than 14 million pieces of content with the help of AI-assisted creation tools, and achieved 30 billion views. After the launch of Baidu Netdisk "Yun Yiduo", it became the world's first "personal cloud intelligent assistant" and has attracted 20 million users. In addition, the cumulative number of users using Baidu Wenku's new AI function has exceeded 30 million.
On the other hand, Wenxin Yiyan continues to evolve efficiently, connecting 70 million users and millions of ecological partners, laying the foundation for sustainable growth. According to data, in the past three months, Wenxin Yiyan has been open to the whole society, and Baidu has released the 4.0 version of the Wenxin Big Model. At present, the number of users of Wenxin Yiyan has reached 70 million, covering 4,300 scenarios.
Whether from the internal perspective of its own business transformation or from the ecological perspective of external empowerment, Baidu has successfully bridged the gap between the development of AI big model technology and commercial transformation, and the underlying logic of its growth is also changing.
In other words, Baidu is well aware that the big model must eventually be implemented and can only generate real value if it is transformed into a widely used tool. For Baidu, the big model is a key fulcrum. Through this fulcrum, Baidu has successfully leveraged the gears of its own business ecology and business efficiency and comprehensively reconstructed the business system. This move has also brought it new productivity and imagination.
Can Robin Li and Baidu win this time?
If the previous big model track advocated "high-profile", then this time Baidu is letting it "take root".
The former is represented by OpenAI and Google, who hope to first come up with a general solution close to the ideal state before discussing the implementation of commercial applications; while the latter is what Baidu is currently doing, using AI native applications to open up incremental space. As Robin Li said, we are about to enter an era of AI native, an era where humans and machines interact through prompts.
This is actually the most familiar evolutionary path that China has taken over the past 40 years. In the Internet era, the focus on technology implementation has not only brought continuous rapid growth to the Chinese economy, but also spawned companies that are on par with the world's technology giants for the first time, and Baidu is one of them.
In the latest research report of Goldman Sachs, the world's largest investment bank, Baidu has been included in the regional strong buy list and is officially favored by the investment community. According to the latest 13F report, former "public offering leader" Wang Yawei's overseas hedge fund Top Ace increased its holdings of Baidu's shares in Q3. Baidu currently accounts for 42.42% of the total position, becoming the top holding stock.
In this third quarter financial report, Baidu not only achieved continuous growth in the medium term, but also with its first-mover advantage and favorable position, as well as the positive feedback effect between business volume, more scenarios and model performance, Baidu's competitive potential will continue to snowball.
It can be said that Baidu has been dormant for more than ten years, and today it has finally gained a firm foothold in the world's most cutting-edge arena, and has completely opened the free door to AI applications for more than 200 million Chinese companies and more than 40 million manufacturing companies.
Looking to the future, AI seems to be able to support not only Baidu's "future", but also the entire Chinese technology industry.
