Baidu (BIDU/09888.HK) released its financial results for the first quarter of 2026 on May 18. Net profit attributable to shareholders came in at 3.445 billion yuan, a year-on-year drop of 55.4%. Non-GAAP net profit totaled 4.332 billion yuan, down 33% year-over-year. Total quarterly revenue reached 32.075 billion yuan (including iQiyi), while Baidu’s core business revenue stood at 26.001 billion yuan—up 2% year-on-year and slightly exceeding market expectations. The most significant figure was that core AI-related revenue hit 13.6 billion yuan, a remarkable 49% increase compared to last year; this marked the first time such revenue accounted for over 50% of Baidu’s core business earnings. CEO Robin Li called this “clear evidence that AI has become the core driving force behind Baidu,” while CFO He Haijian noted that non-GAAP operating profit from core businesses rose 39% quarter-on-quarter to reach 4 billion yuan. Operating cash flow remained positive for three consecutive quarters, hitting 2.7 billion yuan this period.
Breaking down the figures further, overall AI cloud revenue—which covers both computing infrastructure and AI applications—reached 11.3 billion yuan, with GPU cloud services posting a staggering 184% year-on-year growth. On the product front, Baidu launched ERNIE 5.1 in May, which topped Chinese-language model rankings on LMArena. Meanwhile, its autonomous ride-hailing platform Apollo Go completed 3.2 million fully driverless trips, a surge of over 120% year-on-year; now active in 27 cities, the platform has accumulated over 330 million kilometers of autonomous driving mileage. It is also expanding rapidly overseas, with operations already underway in Dubai, London and other markets; Apollo Go ranked second globally in the automotive category of Fast Company’s 2026 Most Innovative Companies list.