Baidu posts fifth consecutive revenue drop as AI bet sputters

Baidu, the Chinese search giant, has reported its fifth consecutive quarterly revenue decline, causing its stock to plummet. The company, which is making a concerted effort to become an "AI-first" organization, has increased its quarterly capex by three times to invest heavily in compute resources. However, Baidu faces a dual challenge as it loses ad share to competitors ByteDance and Alibaba, which is only partially offset by growth in its cloud business.

Additionally, its Ernie model is lagging behind open-weight offerings from AI firms Moonshot and DeepSeek. Analysts have noted that Baidu's struggles reflect broader concerns over big AI spenders, with Bank of America suggesting that Nvidia's stock could be trading at up to a 50% discount due to overestimation of the risks associated with the US chipmaker's AI investments.

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