Robin Li's internal letter: Baidu has long and firmly maintained high-intensity R&D investment

Rakuten reported on November 17

Baidu CEO Robin Li released an internal letter today, saying that in this quarter, Baidu's R&D expenses reached 6.2 billion yuan, an increase of 35% year-on-year, and the intensity of R&D investment continued to rank at the forefront of the world's large technology companies.

"As a technology-based company, we have long maintained a high level of investment in research and development. This allows us to continue to innovate in user services, corporate services and public services. ”

Robin Li said that only by recognizing accurately, keeping it, and concentrating consistently can we go far. The track that Baidu has chosen is the future that has been proven today, and most importantly, Baidu has been deeply cultivated for many years. "Let us maintain the hunger of 'pouncing on' opportunities, persist in working for long-term results, and seize the great opportunity of technological progress to reshape the global economic and industrial landscape."

According to the financial report, Baidu's revenue in the third quarter of 2021 was Baidu's revenue of 31.9 billion yuan, an increase of 13% over the same period last year. Non-GAAP, Baidu's net profit attributable to the company in the third quarter of 2021 was 5.09 billion yuan.

The following is the internal letter of Baidu CEO Robin Li:

Dear Baidu students,

Today, Baidu released its unaudited financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021. In the third quarter, Baidu achieved revenue of 31.9 billion yuan and net profit attributable to Baidu (non-GAAP) of 5.09 billion yuan.

In the first three quarters, under the multiple tests of the epidemic and flood conditions, China's economy continued to recover steadily and remained a stable force leading the global economic recovery. As an enterprise, we must not only pay attention to our own development, but also grow together with the industry and society: we donated 90 million yuan to help Henan Province fight natural disasters; we set up a data management committee to further improve data management policies and increase supervision to ensure the safety of user information; we continue to accelerate the use and popularization of autonomous driving technology to make transportation in large cities smoother and reduce carbon emissions; our Yangquan data center was awarded carbon neutral data center leader (5A level) certification. As an industry representative who actively discloses carbon emission information and fulfills its commitment to low-carbon operations, Baidu is one of the only two Chinese companies in the MSCI Net Zero Emissions Report, and Baidu will also cultivate 5 million AI talents for the society within five years and continue to contribute to the construction of national strategic scientific and technological strength.

In the quarter, Baidu's R&D expenses reached 6.2 billion yuan, an increase of 35% year-on-year, and the intensity of R&D investment continued to rank at the forefront of the world's large technology companies. As a technology-based enterprise, we have long maintained a high level of investment in research and development. This allows us to continue to innovate in user services, corporate services and public services.

We are pleased to see that Baidu Intelligent Cloud continues to grow strongly and is being applied by leading companies in various industries in different scenarios. We have launched a cloud-intelligent solution for the financial services industry, and the end-to-end solution based on Kunlun AI chip and Feipao deep learning platform is helping many financial services companies accelerate their digital transformation. In Guangzhou, where Baidu ACE intelligent transportation solutions are deployed, the traffic conditions on some congested roads have improved by more than 30%, and smart parking has also made it easier for local residents to find available parking spaces; many hospitals have chosen our cloud solution to provide medical care for patients with chronic diseases at home through small smart screens, reducing the number of patient visits.

The Industrial Internet is the basic platform for the digital transformation of China's manufacturing industry, and Baidu Intelligent Cloud has also officially launched the Intelligent Cloud Kaiwu Industrial Internet Platform, which was selected as a featured professional platform by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in the third quarter. Last year, we spent 7 months deploying the Kaiwu platform in the economic development zone of a provincial capital city, providing more than 100 enterprises with on-device cloud, data processing and enterprise application services; not long ago, we deployed the Kaiwu platform to Chongqing Liangjiang, Jiaxing Tongxiang and other regions, which took less than 3 months.

During the quarter, Apollo accumulated more than 16 million kilometers of test mileage at L4 level, an increase of 189% year-on-year, and obtained 411 autonomous driving test licenses, an increase of 237 year-on-year. At present, Baidu Apollo has grown into the world's most active open platform for autonomous driving, with more than 210 global ecological partners, 65,000 global developers, and 700,000 open source code lines.

Thanks to Apollo's operational practices, our self-driving travel service platform Radish Run is normalizing commercial operations. In the third quarter, Radish Run provided 115,000 rides, which we believe makes Radish Run the world's largest provider of self-driving mobility services. We've also set a goal to expand our business to 65 cities by 2025 and 100 cities by 2030. In addition, Deepway, a joint venture between Baidu and Shiqiao, a leading Chinese trucking company, recently launched the first generation of electric trucks to automate road freight, marking Apollo's entry into the multi-trillion-dollar trucking market. Jidu also plans to release its first concept car at next year's Beijing Auto Show, with the goal of mass production in 2023.

As a leading dialogue-based artificial intelligence operating system in China, Xiaodu Assistant is widely used in multiple scenarios such as home, hotel, car, and portable. According to data from Strategy Analytics, Canalys and IDC, based on shipments in the second quarter, Xiaodu once again ranked first in the global smart screen field and first in the field of smart speakers in China.

In terms of mobile ecosystem business, benefiting from the trend of industry interconnection and more openness, our services in key vertical areas are making good progress. In September, the number of third-party SKUs searchable by Baidu from China's leading e-commerce websites approached 1 billion. At the same time, we also continue to use AI technology to improve the user experience, and many small and medium-sized enterprises obtain orders through the Baidu marketing platform to achieve common growth of enterprises and brands.

In the "two bases and one bottom", that is, basic research, basic technology and underlying innovation, Baidu ushered in a number of fruitful results in this quarter. We announced the mass production of the second-generation Kunlun AI chip, which is 2-3 times higher than the performance of the first generation; we released the world's first 10-billion-parameter pre-training dialogue generation model PLATO-XL, which realizes multi-round dialogue interaction between Chinese and English with logic, content and fun" between man and machine; Baidu ERNIE 3.0 refreshes 54 Chinese NLP task benchmarks in one fell swoop, introducing a large-scale knowledge graph in the 10 billion-level pre-training model for the first time. At the same time, Baidu's technology platform brings together more and more developers and partners.

Recognize accurately, keep it, and concentrate on it consistently in order to go far. The track that Baidu has chosen is the future that has been proven today, and most importantly, Baidu has been deeply cultivated for many years. Let us maintain the hunger of "pouncing" in the face of opportunities, persist in working for long-term results, and seize the great opportunity of technological progress to reshape the global economic and industrial landscape. Charge together, students!

Robin

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