The Chinese giant of Baidu technology expressed the confidence on Wednesday that the export restrictions of American semiconductors would not derail its ambitions of artificial intelligence, even if the country’s technological sector is struggling with a blockage of tightening access to advanced American fleas.
The company’s declaration came alongside solid financial results of the first quarter, stimulated by the revival of income from its AI cloud activity and supported by a broader nationalist thrust for technological self-refective.
Vice-President Shen Dou told analysts during a post-benefit call that the development of Baidu AI would continue on the back of “chips developed at the national level and increasingly effective software”, which he described as the foundation of long-term innovation in the Chinese AI ecosystem. The comments marked a direct response to the latest American export controls, which entered into force last month and effectively blocked the H20 fleas of Nvidia – an advanced AI chip adapted to the Chinese market.
Register For TEKEDIA Mini-MBA Edition 17 (June 9 – September 6, 2025)) Today for early reductions. An annual for access to Blurara.com.
Tekedia Ai in Masterclass Business open registration.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and co-INivest in large world startups.
Register become a better CEO or director with CEO program and director of Tekedia.
Baidu’s confidence is largely perceived as part of a broader nationalist technological account defended by Beijing, which has doubled in recent years on local innovation in the climbing of geopolitical tension with Washington. This “technological self -sufficiency” disc has intensified since 2019, when the Chinese telecommunications and Huawei electronics giant was placed on an American black commercial list that cut its access to American technology.
While many were expecting the move paralyzes Huawei’s operations, the company responded with surprising resilience, developing its own Harmonyos operating system and launching 5G compatible smartphones powered by its internal Kirin chips – despite the Washington borders on flea manufacturing tools.
This resilience seems to have served as a model for other Chinese companies, including Baidu because they sail on similar restrictions. The feeling of urgency to innovate without dependence on foreign technologies has led to aggressive investments in AI, semiconductors and cloud infrastructure.
Adding to this momentum, many Chinese companies seem to have retained the confidence of the recent breakthroughs of Deepseek, a localized AI startup that amazed industry observers earlier this year with the performance of its large language model, Deepseek-R1. The model would have exceeded several models supported by the United States in key landmarks, indicating that the Chinese AI sector could potentially fill the gap with Western counterparts.
The deep breakthrough – took place without access to the most advanced chips of Nvidia – has reinforced the conviction that with sufficient talents, IT infrastructure and targeted political support, Chinese companies can innovate around American sanctions. It is this conviction that now underlies the messaging of Baidu, because the company aggressively widens its AI offers and reduces dependence on its traditional advertising business.
In the first quarter of 2025, Baidu declared a total turnover of 32.45 billion yuan ($ 4.50 billion), an increase of 3% in annual sliding which exceeded the average estimate of the analyst of 30.9 billion yuan, according to LSEG data. While revenues from its online marketing segment – the old company’s nucleus – goes from 6% to 17.31 billion yuan, market -free income jumped from 40% to 9.4 billion yuan, driven mainly by the growth of its cloud services fueled by AI.
Net profit came to 21.59 yuan per share of the American deposit (ADS), against 14.91 yuan a year earlier, demonstrating stronger operational efficiency despite regulatory and competitive pressures.
Baidu’s strategic change to AI has been in motion since the beginning of 2023, when the company was among the first in China to launch a chatbot after the release of Chatgpt Openai. His Ernie model in large language has undergone several iterations – the most recently of the deployment of Ernie X1 and Ernie 4.5 in March 2025, both upgraded in “turbo” versions the following month.
Despite being an early mover, Baidu is now faced with strong competition from companies like Deepseek, who challenged the domination of established players. In response, Baidu eliminated the subscription fees for its Chatbot Premium services in April, an aggressive decision that analysts see in the context of a wider strategy to maintain the market share in an AI landscape evolving rapidly.
On the hardware side, Baidu has relied heavily on its own Kunlun chip line to reduce exposure to Western supply chains. The CEO, Robin Li, recently revealed that the company had deployed a group of 30,000 Kunlun P800 p800 p800 fleas – entirely developed entirely internally – to support the formation of comparable models on the scale and complexity to those developed by Deepseek.
Despite this, the market reaction was moderate. The actions listed by the United States of Baidu decreased 0.3% in the morning trade, reflecting persistent concerns about investors concerning geopolitical uncertainty and the increase in competition in the Chinese AI sector.
However, Baidu’s optimism seems deeply rooted in the changing dynamics of the Chinese technological industry, where American pressure has catalyzed a wave of national innovation. With government support, semiconductor capacity growth and an expansion of AI talent, Chinese technology giants are increasingly reporting that they are ready to resist – and perhaps prosper – under the shadow of American sanctions.
