China’s Baidu beats Q3 revenue estimates as ad sales recover

Baidu Inc’s third-quarter revenue beat Wall Street estimates on Tuesday, as China’s search engine giant benefited from a recovery in online advertising sales and growth in its cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) business.

Baidu, which generates most of its revenue from ads on its Google-like search engine, has seen a recovery since the second quarter, before which strict zero-COVID policies in China had led to frequent snap lockdowns and hurt economic activity.

The company has been looking to grow its cloud and AI business, which includes autonomous driving, to diversify its revenue sources.