“We think the impact is quite limited in the near future,” Dou Shen, executive vice president and head of Baidu AI Cloud, said of the US chip export controls.
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Chinese technology company Baidu A company executive said on Tuesday during his third-quarter earnings Q&A session he expects that the impact from US chip sanctions on its business will is limited”.
In October, the US imposes export controls restricting US businesses from selling semiconductors and chip-making equipment to Chinese chipmakers.
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“We think the impact will be quite limited in the near future,” said Dou Shen, executive vice president and head of the AI Cloud team, in response to a question from an audience about the measures. restrictions will affect Baidu’s ability to develop artificial intelligence cloud computing. autonomous driving and arm businesses, dependent on advanced AI chips.
“Much of our AI Cloud business and even the broader AI business don’t rely too much on cutting-edge chips,” Shen said.
Baidu also operates a robotaxi business, Apollo Go, which already has licenses in Beijing, Wuhan and Chongqing’s Yongchuan district to operate a completely unmanned commercial robotaxi service in those places.
“And for the part of our businesses that need cutting-edge chips, we have enough stock to support our business going forward,” he said.
Shen added that Baidu is developing its own AI chip, named Kunlun. He said Baidu has started using Kunlun chips to support some large-scale AI computing tasks internally and to serve external customers.
“Because we have the full range of AI capabilities from chips and frameworks to platform modeling and application software, we can achieve much greater efficiency when we optimize end-to-end AI tasks”.
He added that automotive chips are not on the banned list. “So this means that for the foreseeable future, in-vehicle computing is not affected,” he said.
One analyst told CNBC “Asian Squawk Box” Fourth, Baidu “absolutely” is a top choice, citing chip resilience as one of the reasons.
“They are diversifying their production into their own facilities and starting to use their own chip, Kunlun, for devices,” said James Lee, a US and China internet analyst from Mizuho Securities. advanced applications.
Baidu posted better-than-expected revenue yesterday after cost-cutting bolstered its bottom line. Online advertising also performed better than expected despite challenging economic conditions such as Covid restrictions and inflation.
Shares of Baidu were up 2.61% on Wednesday and down 35.7% year-to-date.
