stooonks

Understand any stock in simple English
Enter a ticker to learn what the company does and how it makes money.

× 🔎 Explain it

---

Baidu, Inc.

Baidu runs China's biggest search engine and sells ads against it, while also building AI and self-driving tech.

Baidu is China's version of Google, but it does much more than search. Its core business is still online ads: when people search or watch short videos on its apps, businesses pay to appear in front of them. That advertising brings in roughly three-quarters of total revenue. Think of it as a giant billboard that only charges you when someone actually looks at it. The company is based in Beijing and earns most of its money from Chinese consumers and advertisers.

But the search engine is only half the story. Baidu has poured billions into artificial intelligence and driverless cars. Its Ernie chatbot competes with ChatGPT-style tools in China, and its Apollo self-driving platform runs robotaxis in several cities. Cloud services and AI tools for businesses are a growing slice of revenue, though they are still much smaller than ads. The company is betting that as ad growth slows, AI and autonomous driving will become the next big money-makers.

Baidu is also pouring cash into buying back its own stock—roughly a few percent of shares each year—and reinvesting in AI research. It was founded in 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu, who saw that Chinese internet users needed a homegrown search engine. Today it serves hundreds of millions of users, and its main challenge is keeping them engaged while fighting off rivals like ByteDance and Tencent.

Saved answer · last researched 9 Oct 2026