“We think the impact is quite limited in the near future,” Dou Shen, govt vp and head of Baidu AI Cloud, mentioned of the U.S. chip export controls.
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Chinese tech firm Baidu expects that influence from U.S. chip sanctions on its companies shall be “limited,” an organization govt mentioned on Tuesday throughout a Q&A session of its third quarter earnings name.
In October, the United States imposed export controls limiting American companies from promoting semiconductors and chipmaking gear to Chinese chip producers.
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“We think the impact is quite limited in the near future,” mentioned Dou Shen, govt vp and head of AI Cloud group, in response to an viewers member’s query about how the curbs will have an effect on Baidu’s capability to develop its synthetic intelligence cloud computing arm and autonomous driving companies, which depend upon superior AI chips.
“A large portion of our AI Cloud business and even wider AI business does not rely too much on the highly advanced chips,” mentioned Shen.
Baidu additionally runs a robotaxi business, Apollo Go, which has secured permits in Beijing, Wuhan and Chongqing’s Yongchuan District to run a totally driverless business robotaxi service in these locations.
“And for the part of our businesses that need advanced chips, we have already stocked enough in hand to support our business in the near term,” he mentioned.
Shen added that Baidu develops its personal AI chip, named Kunlun. He mentioned Baidu has already began to make use of Kunlun chip to help some large-scale AI-computing duties internally and to serve exterior prospects.
“Because we have full stack of AI capabilities from chips to frameworks to foundation models and to application software, we can achieve much higher efficiency as we optimize the AI tasks from end to end,” Shen mentioned.
He added that automotive chips aren’t on the prohibited record. “So, this means that in the near future, in-vehicle computing is not affected,” he mentioned.
An analyst instructed CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” Wednesday that Baidu is “absolutely” a prime decide, citing chip resilience as one of many causes.
“They are diversifying the manufacturing into their own facility and starting to use their own chips, Kunlun, for advanced applications,” mentioned James Lee, a U.S. and China web analyst from Mizuho Securities.
Baidu posted yesterday a better-than-expected acquire in income after price cuts bolstered its backside line. Online promoting additionally carried out higher than anticipated regardless of difficult financial situations resembling Covid restrictions and inflation.
Baidu inventory rose 2.61% Wednesday and is down 35.7% 12 months to this point.