Baidu

Baidu is a company headquartered in Beijing, China. Its annual report on Form 20-F says it was founded as a search engine business in 2000 and gives its principal offices as Baidu Campus, No. 10 Shangdi 10th Street, Haidian District, Beijing. Co-founder Robin Li has been chairman since its inception in January 2000 and chief executive since February 2004. It is listed on Nasdaq and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and it controls the Nasdaq-listed video-streaming company iQIYI.

From search to AI — the 2025 numbers

Revenue for the year ended December 2025 was CNY129.1 billion, down 3%. Baidu attributes the decline to a fall in its legacy business, partly offset by growth in its AI-powered business. It booked a CNY16.2 billion impairment on its core asset group, which turned operating income into a CNY5.8 billion loss; net income attributable to Baidu was CNY5.6 billion. Excluding the impairment, net income was CNY19.4 billion.

From this quarter Baidu renamed its core business Baidu General Business, presented as AI-powered business, legacy business and others, and it notes that the AI-powered figures come from unaudited internal management accounts. Fourth-quarter revenue split into CNY11.3 billion from the AI-powered business, CNY12.3 billion from the legacy business (mainly traditional advertising across search, feed and other properties) and CNY2.5 billion from others. Chief financial officer Haijian He said the Kunlunxin spin-off and separate listing was progressing.

ERNIE — the road to a public chatbot

TechNode reported that, ahead of the public launch, China's internet regulator had issued rules requiring companies to obtain a licence before releasing generative AI models. In its annual report Baidu claims the subscription made it the first company in China to charge users. It says ERNIE Assistant had 202 million monthly active users in December 2025.

Apollo Go

The story of Apollo Go (Luobo Kuaipao), Baidu's autonomous ride-hailing service, is told in the Apollo Go article. Baidu's results release says it provided 3.4 million fully driverless rides in the fourth quarter of 2025.

The US Defense Department designation

On 8 June 2026 the US Department of Defense updated its list of "Chinese military companies" under Section 1260H of the National Defense Authorization Act and added Baidu, Inc. as a new parent-level listing. Alibaba was added in the same update. The law firm WilmerHale notes that Pentagon procurement restrictions are increasingly tied to the list. Baidu's own annual report notes among its risk factors that entities on the list and their subsidiaries are barred from contracts or funding from the US Department of Homeland Security, and that from 30 June 2026 they are barred from Defense Department procurement contracts.

Baidu on this site

A company that began as a search engine now gets over two-fifths of its core revenue from AI-powered business, a quarter-century on. Along the way its pillars have spread down the stack: search advertising, video streaming (iQIYI), autonomous driving, foundation models and AI chips.