Baidu says domestic tech will shield AI push from US curbs

China’s Baidu said on Wednesday U.S. export controls on semiconductors would not significantly impact its AI development, citing access to domestic alternatives.

The dominant search engine in China also reported first-quarter revenue that exceeded analysts’ expectations, boosted by growing demand for its AI cloud services.

“Domestically developed chips and increasingly efficient homegrown software will form a strong foundation for long-term innovation in China’s AI ecosystem,” Baidu Vice President Shen Dou told analysts on a conference call.

The comments come as U.S. export restrictions on advanced semiconductors took effect last month, effectively blocking sales of Nvidia’s H20 chips designed for the Chinese market.

The stance echoes comments from rival Tencent Holdings, whose executives said existing stockpiles of AI chips would shield the company from U.S. export controls.

Total revenue in the first quarter rose 3% to 32.45 billion yuan ($4.50 billion), beating analysts’ average estimate of 30.9 billion yuan, according to data compiled by LSEG.

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Revenue at Baidu’s online marketing business, which contributes the majority to the company, fell 6% to 17.31 billion yuan. Analysts had estimated 17.39 billion yuan.

However its non-online marketing revenue reached 9.4 billion yuan, up 40% year-over-year, mainly driven by its AI cloud business.

The company reported profit of 21.59 yuan per American Depositary Share, compared with profit of 14.91 yuan per share a year earlier.

Baidu has intensified its focus on AI in recent years to reduce its dependence on advertising revenue from its core search engine business.

In early 2023, the company was among the first to launch a chatbot following Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in late 2022.

Despite this early advantage, Baidu’s Ernie large-language model faces fierce competition from Chinese firms such as startup DeepSeek, which shook up the AI landscape earlier this year.

In response, Baidu eliminated fees for its premium chatbot services in April and introduced two new AI models in March - the reasoning-focused Ernie X1 and Ernie 4.5. The company upgraded these offerings to “Turbo” versions the following month.

Baidu’s CEO Robin Li said last month that its cluster comprising 30,000 of its self-developed, third-generation P800 Kunlun chips can support the training of DeepSeek-like models.

The company’s U.S.-listed shares were down 0.3% in morning trading.