Baidu, once seen as China’s answer to Google, hopes for a second chance in smart vehicles ahead of secondary listing in Hong Kong

  • Baidu’s US$3.1 billion secondary listing reveals how one of China’s first internet companies wants to stake a claim in China’s ever-evolving digital future
  • The company’s AI cloud service has grown rapidly in recent years, with non-marketing revenue posting a 28 per cent year-on-year increase to US$1.9 billion last year

A Lincoln Motor Co. MKZ equipped with Baidu’s Apollo autonomous driving platform at the Baidu headquarters in Beijing, March 4, 2021. Photo: Bloomberg

When Baidu launched its initial public offering on the Nasdaq in 2005 it was widely hailed as China’s answer to Google, and it would later follow the California-based giant into the field of artificial intelligence, but today the Chinese company’s market valuation is only 6.3 per cent the size of Google’s.  

Since its own listing in 2004, Google has parlayed its 90 per cent dominance of the global internet search market into an online advertisement juggernaut that pulled in US$146.9 billion last year, taking an estimated 45 per cent of every new digital advertising dollar spent. 

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