Baidu announced its third-quarter financial results, revealing a 7% decline in total revenue to 31.17 billion yuan ($4.38 billion), though this exceeded analyst expectations of 30.7 billion yuan.
The company's core online advertising business suffered an 18% drop to 15.3 billion yuan, attributed to weak consumer spending in China driven by the property sector crisis and ongoing trade tensions with the U.S., which led advertisers to cut tech budgets.
In contrast, non-marketing revenue, including cloud and AI services, grew 21% to 9.3 billion yuan, fueled by demand for large language models and AI development tools.
Baidu reported a net loss of 11 billion yuan, compared to a profit in the same quarter last year, primarily due to asset write-downs, while earnings per share of 11.12 yuan beat estimates by 2.75 yuan.
The company emphasized its increased investments in artificial intelligence, such as the Ernie model and new AI chips, to counter advertising weakness and compete with rivals like Alibaba and DeepSeek.
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