Three years ago, Baidu’s founder Robin Li had said that the acquisition deal would catapult his company into a leading platform for live streaming. However, Baidu in a Hong Kong Stock Exchange filing stated that it would terminate the purchase agreement because the closing of the proposed buy is subject to certain conditions including necessary regulatory approvals from the government.
As per the company, the conditions had not been fulfilled as of December 31 last year. The acquisition agreement was expected to be completed by 2021.
It is no secret that live streaming is a multi-million dollar business in China and generates massive profits for e-commerce firms and influencers. In recent years, Baidu has faced tough competition from rivals like Tencent, the company which runs WeChat, and ByteDance, owner of popular platform TikTok.
The company has also diversified into cloud computing, autonomous driving, artificial intelligence and other sectors. Baidu’s shares had dropped in March after investors were unimpressed by the company’s ChatGPT-like AI software, “Ernie Bot”, the report added.
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According to a Reuters report, Ernie Bot got more than 100 million users, the company’s chief technology officer Wang Haifen had said.
Baidu had opened the AI software to the public in August last year, this after a trial period that ran for more than five months. According to analysts, the partial unveiling that took place in March, was ‘underwhelming’ but still gave Baidu a first-mover advantage in the market.
According to a ranking published by SuperCLUE, Ernie Bot is a leader in all Chinese chatbots but its score of 79.02 is more than 10 points lower than the latest version of ChatGPT.
The company in November had announced modest year-on-year revenue growth of 6.0 percent for the third quarter of 2023.
(With Reuters inputs)
