Baidu touts AI chips’ potential amid sluggish fourth quarter
Revenue from the company’s AI-related business for the December quarter rises 48 per cent year on year to more than US$1.6 billion
Baidu founder, CEO and chairman Robin Li Yanhong touted the performance and potential of artificial intelligence chips developed by its Kunlunxin semiconductor design unit during the fourth-quarter earnings call, offering a rare bright spot in an otherwise lacklustre quarter.
“We’re proud to see the market increasingly recognise [Kunlunxin chips’] value and proven performance,” Li said on Thursday.
The Kunlunxin chips are built on a proprietary architecture and deliver “stable, high-performance AI computing at scale with broad compatibility across different [AI] models”, Li said, citing strong inference efficiency that has driven broad enterprise adoption across sectors including finance, telecommunications and energy.
Li’s remarks come as Baidu reported revenue of 32.74 billion yuan (US$4.8 billion) for the fourth quarter, slightly above analysts’ estimates of 32.66 billion yuan, but down 4 per cent from a year earlier, highlighting how growth in the AI-related business was not enough to offset sluggish advertising demand.
Revenue from its AI-related business for the three months ended December, which includes AI cloud, AI applications and AI marketing services, came in at more than 11 billion yuan, up 48 per cent from a year earlier, according to its earnings statement.