Baidu Reports Swing to Loss Despite Better-Than-Expected Revenue

What’s new: Chinese search engine Baidu Inc. posted a third-quarter loss of 16.6 billion yuan ($2.6 billion), compared with a profit of 13.7 billion yuan a year ago, mainly reflecting a noncash loss on long-term investments.

Quarterly revenue beat market expectations to grow 13% year-on-year to 31.9 billion yuan, driven by cloud and other artificial intelligence (AI)-powered businesses, according to the company’s financial report released Wednesday.