-Chinese search engine giant Baidu Inc beat quarterly revenue Wall Street estimates on Tuesday powered by growth in its artificial intelligence (AI) cloud business.
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Revenue grew to 33.09 billion yuan ($5.24 billion) for the fourth quarter to Dec. 31, beating the 32.22 billion forecast by analysts, IBES data from Refinitiv Eikon showed.
revenue from Baidu's core businesses, which include search engine and AI cloud services, rose 12% to 25.98 billion yuan.
Advertising revenue grew 1% to 19.1 billion yuan, while non-ad revenue, mainly driven by AI cloud, jumped 63% to 6.9 billion yuan.
Baidu has also been doubling down on self-driving vehicles by leveraging the company's capabilities in artificial intelligence as it looks for alternative revenue streams to maintain its blistering pace of growth.
Apollo Go, its robotaxi service, provided around 213,000 rides in the quarter, Baidu CEO Robin Li said in a statement.
Net income attributable to Baidu fell to 1.72 billion yuan, or 4.51 yuan per American Depository Share (ADS) in the quarter, from 5.17 billion yuan, or 15.05 yuan per ADS, a year earlier.
Baidu said it incurred a 27% increase in selling, general and administrative expenses due to higher spending, promotional marketing and personnel costs.
($1 = 6.3121 Chinese yuan renminbi)