BEIJING, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Chinese tech giant Baidu posted strong revenue growth in the second quarter (Q2) of this year thanks to its continuous investment in artificial intelligence (AI).
Total revenue stood at 26 billion yuan (about 3.93 billion U.S. dollars), a 32-percent increase from Q2 2017, with mobile revenue remaining the main contributor, according to a company unaudited financial statement released Wednesday.
Online marketing revenues stood at 21.1 billion yuan, up 25 percent year on year. Net income attributable to Baidu came in at 6.4 billion yuan.
Herman Yu, Baidu CFO, attributed the acceleration of revenue growth to the company's increased investments in AI-powered businesses with strong synergies and divesture from non-core businesses.
In Q2, the company launched the Xiaodu series smart speakers and worked with King Long Motor and Neolix Technology to launch two fully autonomous L4 vehicles. The adoption of Baidu's major AI operating system DuerOS handled over 400 million queries in June 2018, almost doubling the workload over a three-month span.
The company expects to generate total revenues ranging from 27.37 billion yuan to 28.77 billion yuan for the third quarter of 2018, representing an annual increase of 23 percent to 30 percent.
