In the episode of HBR Live: The Future of Business, Baidu founder Robin Li had an in-depth conversation with Adi Ignatius, editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review, discussing the development trends of artificial intelligence (AI), the phenomenon of bubbles, and the future relationship between AI and humanity. Robin Li believes that although it is difficult to avoid bubbles in the early stages of technological waves, ultimately, 1% of companies will emerge after the bubble and create tremendous value for society.

Baidu's Q2 2024 financial report shows total revenue of 33.9 billion RMB, with net profit between 5.5 billion and 7.4 billion RMB, performing better under non-GAAP standards. During the earnings call, Robin Li emphasized that competition in the AI field will be fierce and profitability will be key to survival. Baidu has invested in AI for many years, demonstrating its leading position, especially in the application of large models, with the Wenxin large model averaging over 600 million calls per day. The Intelligent Cloud business grew 14% year-on-year, benefiting from the increased demand for generative AI and large language models. The search business is accelerating its upgrade through the Wenxin large model.

At the recent World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Baidu founder Li Yanhong and Alibaba Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren expressed different views on the importance of open-source models. Li Yanhong stated that closed-source models are superior in effectiveness to equivalent open-source models of the same scale. He emphasized the advantages of closed-source models in providing diverse solutions, better balancing effectiveness, speed, and cost.Image Source Note: The image was generated by AI, and the

Baidu founder Robin Li emphasizes the importance of multi-modal fusion. Baidu has invested in areas such as text-to-video. Baidu is investing in AGI development. The reasoning cost of Baidu's Wenxin large model has been reduced to 1%. Baidu has reached cooperation agreements with Samsung, Honor, and others. Honor will launch its first small foldable phone. Wenxin Yiyan is expected to contribute billions in incremental revenue in 2024. Baidu's investment in text-to-video has made 5G-A a hot topic at the World Mobile Communications Conference.

In Q4 2023, Baidu's revenue grew by 6%. The company's core business revenue reached 27.5 billion yuan, an increase of 7% year-on-year. Baidu's stock price fell by 2.1%. Robin Li is firmly investing in generative AI.