Baidu released its Q1 2026 financial report, marking a structural milestone driven by AI in its core businesses. The report shows that Baidu's total revenue in the first quarter reached 32.1 billion yuan, with general business revenue at 26 billion yuan, an increase of 2% year-over-year. The AI business, which has attracted significant market attention, generated revenue of 13.6 billion yuan, accounting for more than 50% of general business revenue for the first time, reaching 52%, marking that AI has officially become the core engine driving Baidu's growth. During the subsequent earnings call, Baidu's executive team provided in-depth interpretations on large model iterations, computing power layout, and commercialization strategies.

Baidu (2)

Facing increasingly fierce industry competition, Baidu remains committed to investing in the WENXIN large model. The recently released WENXIN large model version 5.1 continues to evolve in text comprehension, reasoning, and search capabilities. Baidu adheres to an "application-driven" approach, focusing on core scenarios such as AI search, digital humans, intelligent agents, and the programming product "Miao Da," promoting the deep integration of technology and real-world needs.

At the same time, the commercialization model of AI intelligent agents and large models is evolving towards more diverse and result-oriented directions. With the continued increase in GPU cloud business within cloud infrastructure, its high technical barriers and strong market demand are driving long-term structural improvements in Baidu Cloud's profit margins. In the autonomous driving sector, Apollo Go, which has completed over 22 million passenger trips, has achieved break-even in key domestic cities and is now accelerating expansion into overseas markets with right-hand and left-hand drive systems, including Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

In the long term, computing power demand is undergoing a structural shift from training to inference. Through the collaborative optimization of full-stack AI capabilities such as昆仑芯 (Kunlun Chip), Baidu continues to improve computing power utilization efficiency under supply-side constraints. These strategic moves not only validate the long-term value of the application-driven path but will also further leverage the operational effects across the entire AI industry chain.