By Reuters

People walk near a Baidu logo at the company headquarters in Beijing, China. REUTERS/Florence Lo/File Photo

(Reuters) -Search engine giant Baidu (9888.HK) on Wednesday reported a surprise rise in first-quarter revenue fueled by increasing demand for its AI cloud services.

Baidu offset losses in its advertising market by growing its AI Cloud segment, which provides cloud computing, AI-powered solutions, and services to enterprises, and drove revenue.

U.S.-listed shares of Baidu rose more than 1.4% in premarket trading.

Revenue in the first quarter stood at 32.45 billion yuan ($4.50 billion), beating analysts' average estimate of 30.9 billion yuan, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Baidu's online marketing business, which contributes the majority of its revenue, fell 6% to 17.31 billion yuan. Analysts had estimated 17.39 billion yuan.

The company reported profit of 21.59 yuan per American Depositary Share, compared with profit of 14.91 yuan per share a year earlier.

($1 = 7.2067 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Liam Mo in Beijing; Editing by Tasim Zahid)

Reuters report

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