The internet company, one of China’s earliest to embrace artificial intelligence, joins Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in enhancing shareholder returns. Baidu was among the first Chinese companies to roll out a ChatGPT-like service, though it lost leadership in the field to its larger rivals as well as up-and-comers like DeepSeek.

Baidu’s Hong Kong-listed shares advanced as much as 2.4% on Thursday before trimming gains, outperforming the Hang Seng Tech Index’s drop of over 1%. They’re down about 14% from a 2026 high, and have almost halved from a March 2021 lifetime peak.

“It’s a step in the right direction since one of the common complaints about Baidu is a lack of shareholder returns,” said Vey-Sern Ling, managing director at Union Bancaire Privee in Singapore. “But $5 billion is not a large amount relative to what they have on the balance sheet and it’s over three years. They also did not specify how much dividends they intend to pay.”

In 2024, Alibaba approved a $25 billion stock repurchase program — doubling down on the $9.5 billion it green-lit a year earlier — after nixing plans to pursue a public listing for its burgeoning cloud division. Tencent last year laid out plans to buy back at least HK$80 billion ($10.2 billion) worth of shares and proposed a 32% hike in its annual dividend for 2025.

Beyond the internet sphere, other major Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong are also seeking to shore up investor confidence by buying back their own shares. Among them are Xiaomi Corp., Pop Mart International Group Ltd. and Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd., which have been active in recent trading days.

Baidu now joins Alibaba and Tencent in a heated competition to secure customers and users ahead of the Lunar New Year. Together, they have plans to give away hundreds of millions of dollars in credits to spur use of their ChatGPT-style apps.