Baidu's Q4 and Full-Year 2023 Financial Report: AI Drives Annual Performance Exceeding Expectations!
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On February 28, Beijing time, Baidu released its Q4 and full-year 2023 financial report, showing total revenue of 134.598 billion yuan for 2023, with non-GAAP net profit attributable to Baidu reaching 28.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39%. Q4 revenue was 34.951 billion yuan, with non-GAAP net profit attributable to Baidu at 7.755 billion yuan, a significant year-on-year increase of 44%. In 2023, Baidu's annual revenue and profits both exceeded market expectations.
AI has become a new growth driver for Baidu. The financial report shows that Baidu Core revenue in 2023 was 103.465 billion yuan, with non-GAAP net profit attributable to Baidu Core reaching 27.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 38%. In December 2023, Baidu App's monthly active users reached 667 million. As of January 2, 2024, Apollo Go's total service orders exceeded 5 million. In Q4, Apollo Go's service orders increased by 49% year-on-year to 839,000, with fully driverless orders accounting for 45% in Wuhan.
Robin Li, Baidu's Founder, Chairman, and CEO, stated: "In 2023, we made significant progress in iterating the ERNIE and ERNIE Bot models, restructuring products and services, and commercialization. At the same time, Baidu's core business maintained resilience and healthy development. Looking ahead, we will continue to firmly invest in generative AI and foundational models to lay the groundwork for creating new growth engines."
Baidu's CFO Rong Luo said: "Over the past year, we have remained focused on improving operational efficiency. In 2024, we will continue to enhance operational efficiency to achieve high-quality growth." In 2023, both ERNIE Bot usage and ERNIE Model API calls maintained rapid growth. Public data shows that by the end of December 2023, ERNIE Bot had over 100 million users. Robin Li mentioned in a speech last November that while there are over 200 large models in China, "the API calls of ERNIE Model alone exceed the combined total of these 200+ models."
The ERNIE Model has opened up new growth opportunities for Baidu. In the fourth quarter, leading companies such as Samsung China, Honor, and Autohome partnered with Baidu. For example, Samsung's latest flagship Galaxy S24 series integrates multiple ERNIE Model capabilities, including call functions, translation, and intelligent summarization. The "Circle to Search" feature has particularly stood out, allowing users to simply circle or underline text or images to receive precise search results.
Meanwhile, the application of ERNIE Model technology and the PaddlePaddle community ecosystem have formed a "flywheel effect." Financial reports indicate that PaddlePaddle has attracted 10.7 million developers, served 235,000 enterprises and institutions, and facilitated the creation of 860,000 models. Within the PaddlePaddle Galaxy Community, over 4,000 innovative applications based on ERNIE Bot have been developed, covering scenarios such as marketing, education and training, and smart office solutions.
Over the past year, Baidu has comprehensively advanced the AI-native reconstruction of its products and services, launching AI-native applications like the new Baidu Search, Baidu Wenku, and the ERNIE Bot App, as well as AI marketing tools such as Qingke and Brand Bots. According to financial reports, in December 2023, Baidu App reached 667 million monthly active users. For the full year of 2023, online marketing revenue totaled 75.1 billion yuan, with fourth-quarter online marketing revenue at 19.2 billion yuan. Many companies, including Feihe, have started using AI-native marketing tools reconstructed based on the Wenxin model. Taking Feihe, China's leading milk powder brand, as an example, the "Feihe Official Smart Assistant" built on the brand intelligence entity can provide users with more accurate and personalized services through multi-turn conversations.
Baidu Wenku has been reconstructed into a "one-stop AI content creation platform," offering capabilities such as generating and editing smart documents, PPTs, mind maps, research reports, multilingual document summarization, Q&A, and reference generation. Combined with full-scenario applications of natural language instructions, it greatly enhances creation efficiency and quality. According to public data, Baidu Wenku AI has over 80 million users, with new features being used more than 700 million times. A report from the National Industrial Information Security Center shows that in the field of PPT generation, Baidu Wenku ranks first with a score of 86, leading in multiple indicators such as generation quality and intent understanding.
Thanks to the continuous optimization of Baidu's unique four-layer AI architecture, the inference costs of the Wenxin model continue to decline, while training efficiency keeps improving. Robin Li previously revealed at an event that from March to December 2023, the Wenxin model has reduced inference costs to 1% of the original. At the same time, through the collaborative optimization of PaddlePaddle and Wenxin, the model's weekly training efficiency exceeds 98%.
To further enhance the development efficiency of AI-native applications and models, Baidu Intelligent Cloud has launched two major tools: Qianfan AppBuilder and Qianfan ModelBuilder. As an AI-native application development workbench, AppBuilder not only provides developers with rich development kits and application components but also offers a low-code state with lower barriers, allowing users without coding knowledge to quickly create their own AI-native applications using natural language. Qianfan ModelBuilder provides a complete toolchain for large model development, supporting the development of proprietary models and model fine-tuning. Currently, Qianfan ModelBuilder has fine-tuned over 10,000 models, offering developers a complete large model solution that combines proprietary models with foundational large models.