Baidu’s AI revenue jumped 50% YoY to ~RMB 10B, which sounds great, but the full picture is more mixed — the company also reported –RMB 4.7B free cash flow earlier this year mainly due to heavy AI infrastructure spending. So while AI is now a third of Baidu’s revenue, the short-term ROI isn’t strong yet because the cash outlay (servers, GPUs, data centres) is far larger than the revenue gained. In short: solid growth, but still very capital-intensive — more of a long-term bet than immediate profit engine.