"We are full of expectations for 2025. We realize that in today's artificial intelligence field, competition is more intense than ever, the speed of technology iteration is faster than ever, and the challenges we face are unprecedented. However, we firmly believe that AI native applications empowered by large models are rapidly becoming popular in various industries and scenarios. Although super applications have not yet emerged, the actual penetration rate of AI is not low, and will continue to grow explosively in 2025."
On January 1, 2025, Baidu founder Robin Li sent an all-employee letter in the evening. In the all-employee letter, he talked about his expectations for 2025. He hoped that the seeds planted by Baidu in 2023 and 2024 would take root, sprout, blossom and bear fruit in 2025, and continue to gain market verification and recognition.
That day was also the 25th anniversary of the founding of Baidu. Robin Li said that 25 years ago today, seven young people with the dream of changing the world with technology began an entrepreneurial journey in two small rooms at the Peking University Resource Hotel in Zhongguancun. Today, more than half of Chinese people use Baidu to obtain information every month.
Summarizing Baidu's 25-year history, Robin Li said that Baidu has experienced the PC Internet era, the mobile Internet era, and now has basically entered the artificial intelligence era. Baidu has invested more than 20% of its revenue in research and development for many years, and spared no effort to productize the most cutting-edge technology, "because we believe that only large-scale applications can allow technology to exert its value. Even in artificial intelligence in recent years, Practice in intelligence shows that major technological breakthroughs and disruptive innovations are often the result of large-scale applications, not the cause. Without the Wanka cluster, there would be no emergence of large-scale intelligence, and there would be no wave of generative AI; without hundreds of millions of operating kilometers, unmanned driving would not be ten times safer than manned driving; without the promotion of a large number of native AI applications, domestic AI chips would not be truly mature."
Robin Li believes that being at the forefront of technology also means taking greater risks, enduring a higher probability of failure than peers, being able to endure loneliness, enduring others' incomprehension or even supercilious looks, constantly trying and making mistakes, and knowing when you have gone in the wrong direction.
Talking about the past 2024, Robin Li concluded that 2024 is also a microcosm of the past 25 years, full of opportunities and challenges, sometimes exciting, sometimes frustrating, and some work will not be completed or not until the last day. As in the past, Baidu has firmly explored and innovated in AI technology this year. It has pioneered the world's first image-based retrieval enhancement technology iRAG, which greatly reduces the illusion of image generation. It is committed to allowing amateurs who cannot write programs to have the ability of programmers. To this end, it has released Miaoda, which is in sharp contrast to the world's mainstream code-assisted generation. Baidu is also unique in the field of large model applications, providing content creation and ideological collision capabilities for 40 million paying users of the library.
On the evening of November 21, 2024, Baidu released its financial report for the third quarter of 2024. The total quarterly revenue was 33.557 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3% and a month-on-month decrease of 1%; under non-GAAP, the net profit attributable to Baidu was 5.886 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 19% and a month-on-month decrease of 20%. During the conference call, Robin Li reiterated that Baidu adheres to a strategy with artificial intelligence as its core, and improving AI capabilities is Baidu's long-term strategic focus. This strategy will enable Baidu to seize major long-term growth opportunities.
It is reported that Baidu will launch a new version of the Wenxin large model in early 2025 to consolidate its lead in the basic model. Although Robin Li has conveyed the message many times outside that Baidu is not going to launch a super application, but to help more companies create millions of super useful applications, but in occasions like the financial report meeting, Robin Li mentioned that he believes that the new Baidu search has the potential and is ready to become a popular application in the era of generative artificial intelligence.
According to Dazhi VIP, as of the close of trading on December 31, 2024, Baidu fell 1.31% to HK$82.700 per share.