2024-01-25 20:15:56 ET
Summary
- Baidu continues to build on its lead in China’s AI race.
- Having checked the user growth box post-Ernie Bot launch, all eyes are now on monetization.
- Few of the positives seem to be in the price, and thus, investors get a lot of bang for their buck here.
The times are changing for Baidu (BIDU) ( BAIDF ). Having long been China’s leading search engine company and little more, the company is slowly but surely carving out a new leadership position in the Chinese artificial intelligence (‘AI’) space. Since I last covered the name, Baidu has further built on its successful AI-powered ‘Ernie Bot’ 4.0 (the equivalent of ChatGPT 4.0) launch, most recently acquiring over 100m users since its launch in Q3 last year. With Ernie’s professional version already monetized for per-month subscription charges as well, incremental AI revenues could surprise to the upside sooner than many think. There’s also the ecosystem-wide boost from AI synergies to consider, most notably in the online advertising and cloud businesses. While risks remain, particularly on the geopolitical side, as this month’s selloff (triggered by speculation regarding military links ) showed, Baidu’s rate of change is overwhelmingly net positive....
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Baidu: Poised For Upside As AI Monetization Begins