In the third quarter, ending 30 September 2025, Baidu’s AI cloud maintained strong growth momentum. The company said this was driven by broadening enterprise adoption of its AI products and solutions.

However, total revenues were reported at RMB 31.2 billion ($4.38 billion), which marks a 7% decrease year over year. While AI and cloud have boosted the business, increased cost in these areas have resulted in cost of revenues being reported at RMB 18.3 billion ($2.57 billion), increasing 12% year over year.

Where Baidu is seeing success

In the third quarter of 2025, Baidu is disclosing three categories that demonstrated significant revenue contribution. These include:

• AI Cloud Infra – AI infrastructure and platform services within AI Cloud serving enterprises and the public sector. In Q3 2025, Baidu said revenue from AI Cloud Infra reached RMB 4.2 billion, up 33% year over year, with subscription-based revenue from AI accelerator infrastructure growing 128% year over year.
• AI Applications – AI-native or AI-powered product offerings addressing specific use cases for individuals and enterprises, including Baidu’s flagship software products such as Baidu Wenku, Baidu Drive and Digital Employee. Many of Baidu’s AI applications are based on sticky subscription models, the company said, delivering high-quality revenue. In the third quarter of 2025, revenue from AI Applications reached RMB 2.6 billion, increasing 6% year over year.
• AI-native Marketing Services – AI-native online marketing products and services, including agents and digital humans. Baidu said AI-native Marketing Services represent a second growth curve beyond Baidu’s legacy business, gaining strong traction with customers seeking performance-driven AI-native solutions and willing to pay a premium for cutting-edge AI technologies that enhance productivity and marketing returns. In the third quarter of 2025, revenue from AI-native marketing services reached RMB 2.8 billion, increasing 262% year over year.

Driving digital change

Notably, Apollo Go – Baidu’s autonomous ride-hailing service that operates driverless robotaxis – significantly accelerated the scaling of the company’s fully driverless operations as it globally expands.

The service provided 3.1 million fully driverless operational rides in Q3 2025, with cumulative rides provided to the public surpassing 17 million as of November 2025. Now committed to advancing its global expansion, Apollo Go is deepening its partnerships in places like Switzerland, Abu Dhabu and Hong Kong.

Likewise, the company’s Mobile Ecosystem, AI-native monetisation products such as agents and digital humans, delivered rapid revenue growth. Baidu has continued to advance the AI transformation of Baidu Search and, in October 2025, roughly 70% of mobile search result pages contained AI-generated content.

Robin Li, co-founder and CEO of Baidu, explained how these achievements in Q3 demonstrate strong long-term growth potential for the company.

“We will continue pioneering AI innovations that create substantial value for users, enterprises and society, cementing our leadership in the AI era,” he said.

Maintaining its position as an AI leader

Already the dominant internet search engine in China, Baidu has quickly progressed to be an AI leader in recent years. The company is well-known for its ERNIE, its series of conversational AI models, and just recently unveiled ERNIE 5.0 at Baidu World in November 2025.

Baidu said ERNIE 5.0 delivers strong performance across omni-modal understanding, creative writing and instruction following.

Based on feedback from its investors, Baidu is pushing AI further by introducing a new AI-native view to better organise its business and reveal a broad array of AI-powered assets across the company.

Moving forward, Baidu said it will provide business updates through this AI-native view on an ongoing basis, while continuing to disclose results under the existing reporting methods.

Haijian He, CFO of Baidu, added: “AI Cloud achieved healthy expansion in the third quarter, cushioning the impact from softness in our online marketing business. Our strategic AI investments are yielding strong returns.

“Revenue from AI-powered businesses grew over 50% year-over-year to roughly RMB 10 billion in the third quarter of 2025, laying a solid foundation for sustainable long-term growth.”

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