What Is Baidu? From China’s Search Engine to an AI and Robotaxi Platform

Baidu, Inc. is a Beijing-based Chinese internet and artificial-intelligence company. It became widely known through Chinese-language search and keyword advertising, but its strategy now reaches far beyond search results. The company is investing in AI cloud infrastructure, foundation models, enterprise AI, intelligent driving and Apollo Go, its autonomous ride-hailing service.

How Baidu began

Baidu was founded in 2000 by Robin Li, also known as Li Yanhong, and Eric Xu. Before launching Baidu, Li developed RankDex, a web-ranking technology that existing sources identify as an important early foundation for his later approach to search.46

From the outset, Baidu focused on indexing Chinese-language webpages, information retrieval and online advertising. That focus helped it become a major gateway through which people in China found information online.

Legally, Baidu is a Cayman Islands holding company incorporated in January 2000. Its principal executive offices are at Baidu Campus in Beijing’s Haidian District.34

Ownership and stock listings

Baidu is a publicly traded company with listings in both the United States and Hong Kong:

• Its American Depositary Shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker BIDU.
• Its Hong Kong-listed shares trade under 9888 on the Hong Kong-dollar counter and 89888 on the renminbi counter.
• Each ADS represents eight Class A ordinary shares.54

Baidu’s corporate structure includes mainland Chinese operating entities, subsidiaries and variable-interest-entity arrangements. For overseas investors, that means the listed securities and the underlying Chinese operating businesses are connected through a legal and control structure rather than through direct ownership of every domestic entity.54

What businesses does Baidu operate?

Search and consumer apps

Search remains Baidu’s most recognizable business. Around that core, the company operates or provides products including maps, encyclopedic information, discussion forums, document services, cloud storage, translation, video and mobile applications. Together, these products form a consumer ecosystem spanning information, content, knowledge and digital tools.36

Baidu’s search business includes more than unpaid results. It also sells keyword, feed, display, brand and AI-native marketing services. In the traditional advertising model, businesses bid for more prominent placement and generally pay according to clicks or other performance measures.

AI Cloud and enterprise services

Baidu AI Cloud provides businesses with cloud infrastructure, data platforms, AI-development tools and industry solutions. The company’s 2025 financial information said that growth in cloud services partly offset a decline in online-marketing revenue.53

This gives Baidu a potential source of growth that is less dependent on consumer search traffic. If companies continue to use Baidu Cloud for model training, inference, data processing and industry applications, enterprise AI could become a more important revenue engine than traditional search advertising.

Foundation models and AI applications

Baidu’s AI portfolio includes the ERNIE model family, ERNIE Bot and related enterprise applications, the PaddlePaddle deep-learning platform, AI chips and intelligent-computing infrastructure. The company reported that revenue from Baidu Core’s AI-powered businesses exceeded RMB 11 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, representing 43% of Baidu General Business revenue.40

That figure shows Baidu trying to turn AI capabilities into measurable commercial revenue rather than treating large models solely as research projects or product features. At the same time, slower traditional advertising means its newer AI businesses must continue to demonstrate that they can scale and become profitable.

Apollo and Apollo Go

Apollo is Baidu’s autonomous-driving technology platform. It covers mapping, perception, simulation, vehicle software and partnerships with automakers. Apollo Go is the public-facing autonomous ride-hailing service, commonly known as a robotaxi operation.

Baidu reported that Apollo Go completed 3.4 million fully driverless operational rides in the fourth quarter of 2025, with weekly rides peaking at more than 300,000 during the quarter. By February 2026, the service had provided more than 20 million rides to the public.39

Baidu has also said that Apollo Go entered Dubai and Abu Dhabi, indicating that its international ambitions extend beyond search products to autonomous-driving technology and mobility services.33

How does Baidu make money?

Search advertising has historically been Baidu’s central business model. Advertisers pay for prominent placement linked to particular keywords, while Baidu earns revenue through clicks, impressions and other marketing services. The model connects user search activity, advertiser budgets and Baidu’s ability to distribute information.

But information discovery is becoming more fragmented. Short-video platforms, social networks, e-commerce services and AI assistants are all competing for attention that once flowed mainly through conventional search engines. Baidu is therefore extending its commercial focus to AI Cloud, model usage, enterprise solutions, AI-native marketing and autonomous driving.

Baidu reported total revenue of RMB 129.1 billion, or approximately US$18.5 billion, for 2025. Revenue fell 3% year over year, primarily because of lower online-marketing revenue, while cloud-services growth partly offset the decline.53

The figures point to a transition rather than a clean replacement of search advertising by AI. Baidu is using growing AI-related businesses to compensate for pressure on a mature advertising business.

Who competes with Baidu?

Baidu’s competitive landscape now extends well beyond traditional search engines:

• In information discovery and content distribution, it competes with Tencent, ByteDance and its short-video and feed products, Xiaohongshu, Huawei and numerous specialist platforms.
• In cloud computing and enterprise AI, its competitors include Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud, ByteDance and specialist AI companies.
• In robotaxis and autonomous driving, it faces Pony.ai, WeRide, AutoX and other Chinese programs, as well as companies such as Waymo and Tesla in overseas markets.

Baidu’s advantages include long-standing search traffic, mapping and data capabilities, AI research infrastructure, and an effort to combine models, cloud services and autonomous driving within one technology group. Its challenge is converting those assets into sustained user adoption, enterprise demand, advertising spending and dependable profits.

Technology, acquisitions and patents

Baidu’s development can be broadly divided into several stages: Chinese-language search and webpage ranking; expansion into mobile apps, maps, content and cloud services; increased investment in deep learning, knowledge graphs, speech and computer vision; and the development of ERNIE models, PaddlePaddle, AI chips and the Apollo autonomous-driving platform.

The company has also used acquisitions and investments to add capabilities in mobile internet, mapping, video, chips and autonomous driving. Its 2013 acquisition of 91 Wireless was an important deal in mobile-app distribution, and Baidu has maintained interests in related businesses including iQIYI.36

Patent comparisons require caution. Counts can differ depending on the database, filing jurisdiction, grant status and methodology. A single headline figure therefore cannot fully measure Baidu’s technological strength. Baidu has cited research stating that, as of the end of 2024, it held one of China’s larger portfolios of AI-related patents and patent applications, but that claim reflects a particular research methodology and should not be compared directly with every patent database.45

How international is Baidu?

Baidu’s core search and consumer-internet businesses remain heavily concentrated in China. Compared with search, Apollo and Apollo Go’s overseas partnerships and pilot programs better illustrate the company’s current international direction, including its expansion into the Middle East.33

Baidu is therefore not a company that has simply replicated Google’s business model worldwide. A more accurate description is a China-centered technology company attempting to export selected AI cloud, model and autonomous-driving capabilities to overseas markets.

Major controversies and regulatory pressure

Paid search and the Wei Zexi case

In 2016, university student Wei Zexi saw information about a hospital in Baidu search results, later received a controversial cancer treatment and died. The case prompted widespread criticism of Baidu’s paid-search practices, medical-advertising review and the way promoted results were identified. Chinese authorities subsequently investigated the matter.1718

An official investigation reported that Baidu’s performance-based promotional listings were not clearly enough distinguished from ordinary search results at the time, potentially leading users to view paid content as more objective than it was.30

The case highlighted a broader ethical problem for search platforms: when a company profits from rankings and exposure, can users clearly distinguish advertising from independent information—especially in high-risk areas such as healthcare and finance?

Commercialization of Tieba communities

Baidu Tieba, its online forum platform, was criticized after reports that some forums’ management or commercial rights had been transferred to third-party medical organizations. Critics argued that patient communities were being used for commercial purposes. Baidu later confirmed that it had stopped selling forum-moderator rights and related arrangements.28

As with the Wei Zexi case, the dispute raised questions about trust. Users may view online communities as spaces for support and mutual assistance, while a platform’s commercial arrangements can alter how those communities are managed and whose interests they serve.

The 2010 domain hijacking

In 2010, attackers altered Baidu.com’s DNS records in the United States, redirecting visitors to a page claiming to represent the “Iranian Cyber Army.” The website was temporarily unavailable.24

This was a domain- and DNS-level security incident. It did not mean that Baidu’s core search infrastructure had been completely breached. It did, however, demonstrate that major internet platforms must protect not only servers and applications but also domain registration, DNS and account-management systems.

Other governance issues

Baidu has also faced criticism and allegations involving advertising-click fraud connected to affiliated applications, overseas app restrictions, content governance, privacy and workplace culture. The evidence and allocation of responsibility differ across these cases, so an association with Baidu should not automatically be treated as proof that Baidu directly carried out the conduct. In the DO Global controversy, for example, Baidu said that the company was independent rather than a Baidu subsidiary.

The 2026 U.S. “Chinese military companies” list

In June 2026, the U.S. Department of Defense placed Baidu on a list prepared under Section 1260H of the National Defense Authorization Act. The designation represents the Pentagon’s determination; it is not automatically a criminal conviction and does not by itself amount to a blanket investment ban covering all of Baidu’s businesses.12

Baidu responded that it was not a Chinese military company or a military-civil-fusion contributor to China’s defense-industrial base, and said there was “no credible justification” for its inclusion.5

The designation adds uncertainty around U.S. government contracts, investor risk assessments and the broader U.S.–China technology relationship. Its consequences are best understood by distinguishing a designation list from procurement restrictions, sanctions and a comprehensive commercial ban.

The bottom line

Baidu began with Chinese-language search and keyword advertising. It is now trying to become an AI platform connecting search, cloud computing, foundation models and autonomous driving. Its 2025 results show that AI-related businesses are becoming a more significant source of revenue, while the decline in online marketing shows that its legacy business remains under pressure.3953

The most useful description of Baidu is not simply “China’s Google.” It is a broad technology company built on a Chinese search business and now betting heavily on enterprise AI, cloud services and driverless mobility. Its future will depend on whether it can commercialize AI at scale, expand Apollo Go sustainably, and rebuild long-term trust while navigating content governance, advertising transparency and international regulatory pressure.