Baidu’s quarterly revenue drops 4% as AI cloud surge fails to offset advertising slump

Chinese tech giant Baidu on Tuesday posted a 4 per cent year-on-year decline in second-quarter revenue, as continued weakness in advertising outweighed growth in its artificial intelligence cloud operations, highlighting intensifying competition in China’s tech sector. Revenue for the three months ended June reached 31.3 billion yuan (US$4.62 billion), slightly missing the 31.6 billion yuan consensus estimate from analysts polled by Bloomberg. Net profit for the quarter was 2.3 billion...