Baidu posts fifth consecutive revenue drop as AI bet sputters

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Chinese search giant Baidu posted a fifth consecutive quarterly revenue drop on Tuesday, sending its stock sliding, as it shells out to keep pace with domestic AI peers.
Baidu is pivoting to become an “AI-first company,” its CEO said, tripling its quarterly capex as it ploughs cash into compute. But Baidu “faces a two-pronged existential fight,” Bloomberg wrote: It’s losing ad share to ByteDance and Alibaba — only partly offset by cloud growth — and its Ernie model lags open-weight offerings from AI firms Moonshot and DeepSeek.
While Baidu’s stumble reflects broader anxiety over big AI spenders, Bank of America said Nvidia’s stock could be trading at up to a 50% discount, with investors “overstating the risks” of the US chipmaker’s AI investments.

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