Baidu Posts Robust Q1 Earnings Boosted by Cloud, AI Businesses

Chinese search engine and AI giant Baidu on Tuesday posted a stronger-than-expected 25% jump in first quarter earnings from a year earlier, beating analysts' estimates.

The Beijing-headquartered company reported 28.13 billion yuan ($4.38 billion) in total revenues for the three months ended March, compared with the average 27.3 billion yuan ($4.2 billion) that was forecast.

The strong performance was driven partly by its non-advertising revenue, which rose 70% year-over-year to 4.2 billion yuan ($646 million) and includes the company's cloud, AI and smart transportation businesses.

Despite increasing competition from rivals including ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent, Baidu still managed to bring in 16.3 billion yuan ($2.48 billion) in online marketing revenue, an increase of 27% year-on-year.

Monthly active users on the Baidu App climbed to 558 million, of which the proportion of daily logged in users reached more than 75% in March 2021, the firm said.