Compared with Ali and Tencent, baidu investment business, which is rarely good at investment, was once mocked by the industry as “not understanding”. But now, this “incomprehensible Baidu investment” has become baidu’s new focus. In the past two months, Baidu has made two forays into the investment business. A month after launching BaiduVenture on Sept. 13, baidu announced the launch of BaiduCapital. The former focuses on early-stage entrepreneurial projects, while the latter will mainly invest in mid-to-late-stage projects in the pan-Internet field.

According to the information released by Baidu, Baidu capital scale is up to 20 billion yuan, the average investment amount of each project will be 50 million to 100 million DOLLARS, not limited to RMB or USD projects, for heavyweight projects, will increase the investment amount.

But Baidu flexing its muscles to “buy buy buy” at the same time, the industry doubt is, in the current wave of industry consolidation, baidu glutinous rice, Baidu takeout before it is to sell? After all, the same acquisition way to join the “Baidu department” Baidu literature, Baidu games have changed hands.

Giiso Information, founded in 2013, is a leading technology provider in the field of “artificial intelligence + information” in China, with top technologies in big data mining, intelligent semantics, knowledge mapping and other fields. At the same time, its research and development products include editing robots, writing robots and other artificial intelligence products! With its strong technical strength, the company has received angel round investment at the beginning of its establishment, and received pre-A round investment of $5 million from GSR Venture Capital in August 2015.



O2O into chicken ribs?

In the second half of this year, Baidu has been rumored to sell its O2O business.

After several times of brewing, the rumor seems to be more regular, detailed baidu takeout together with nuomi sold to Meituan Dianping package, and the deal is close to the end.

Baidu for the above rumors of the response quickly, that the merger rumors are not true. But just because the merger isn’t real doesn’t mean Baidu isn’t trying to sell its O2O business.

Zeng Liang, vice president of Baidu and general manager of Baidu Numi, responded to the merger rumors in a recent interview, saying that baidu considers life service a strategic job, so for Baidu, the merger is based on baidu having a controlling stake or becoming a major shareholder with absolute say. Based on this demand, it is difficult for the two sides to reach an agreement on the bottom line, and there is almost no possibility of merger negotiations.

This is interpreted by the industry as Zeng Liang is to Meituan-Dianping opened an asking price, that is, in the case of conditional permission, Baidu Nuomi can be sold.

An investor who focuses on MERGERS and acquisitions in the O2O sector once told China Business News that Baidu’s sale of nuomi and takeout to Meituan is false news. “The hype is to sell meituan at a high price,” he said.

However, on September 8, Zeng Liangfa’s internal letter stressed that O2O competition is a marathon, and it is in the middle of changing courses. To reach the end of the victory depends on technology (ability), human efficiency (hard work) and capital (endurance), which is what Baidu Nuomi has.

Referring to zeng Liang’s internal letter, not only Nuomi, but also Baidu still maintains full patience and persistence on O2O. However, the industry is now more willing to believe that O2O continued to burn money to test Li’s patience, now Baidu has abandoned the O2O strategy.

Baidu shares rose 6.34 per cent on Sept 7, Beijing time, after rumors of a merger between Baidu Take-out and Baidu Nuomi and Meituan-Dianping surfaced again.

“After the rumor came out, Baidu’s share price rose, [indicating] the capital market is not optimistic about Baidu to do O2O.” Internet analyst Li Chengdong believes that Baidu’s own positioning is still a technology company, not a company selling goods, do nuomi itself deviates from Baidu’s long-term strategic choice.

Giiso information, founded in 2013, is the first domestic high-tech enterprise focusing on the research and development of intelligent information processing technology and the development and operation of core software for writing robots. At the beginning of its establishment, the company received angel round investment, and in August 2015, GSR Venture Capital received $5 million pre-A round of investment.

Pressure to make money

In an interview in September, Li said baidu had cut 2 billion yuan in revenue in a quarter over the past few months because of the wei Zexi scandal.

In the second quarter of 2016, Baidu’s total revenue was 18.264 billion yuan, up 10.2% year on year. But net profit in the second quarter was 2.414 billion yuan, down 34.1 percent year on year. Among them, Baidu’s most important online marketing revenue in the second quarter was 16.939 billion yuan, up only 4 percent from 16.227 billion yuan last year.

In this regard, Baidu also expects the total revenue in the third quarter of 2016 to be 18.04 billion yuan to 18.58 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 1.9% to 1.1% growth. This is the lowest revenue growth forecast baidu has had in recent years.

Baidu’s internal adjustment followed.

In July 2015, Baidu launched the “Aircraft carrier Plan”, which separated baidu Nuomi, Baidu Takeout, Baidu Video, Baidu Music, Baidu Literature, 91 Desktop and other businesses that had been heavily invested in and raised funds independently.

The result was a merger between Baidu Music and Taihe Music Group, and baidu Literature was sold to Perfect World for 1 billion yuan. For the O2O project with a huge amount of money, even Robin Li gave baidu Nuomi “member +” strategic press conference platform at the end of June last year, and made a bold statement that “Baidu still has more than 50 billion in cash in its account, so first take 20 billion to make Nuomi good”.

However, at baidu’s world conference on September 1, Li said he would focus on promoting “Baidu Brain”, reiterating that Baidu is already an ARTIFICIAL intelligence company, and the O2O strategy of a year ago may no longer win the FAVOR of the CEO.

In addition, baidu capital focus just appeared in the later period of the project has also been interpreted by the industry as Baidu hopes to gain profits in some investment projects quickly.

“Entering the second half of the Internet, Baidu defined itself as a technology innovation company rather than an O2O catering service company, and the ‘Wei Zanxi incident’ a few months ago significantly weakened Baidu’s profitability.” In Li chengdong’s opinion, Baidu has lost a lot in O2O, dragging down its profits and making Baidu face financial pressure.