Baidu is down 48% this year as more than 1,000 Hong Kong residents get free Apollo Go rides

Hong Kong put its first large-scale public robotaxi trial↗ on the street this week. From October 21, more than 1,000 residents of the Tung Chung district will ride Baidu's▼−0.90% — Baidu, down 0.90 percent today Apollo Go cars free around a 5.1km, 15-minute loop until November 3, a backup operator aboard each vehicle ¹².

The same week, on October 22, South Korea's Hankook Tire said it will widen supply of its electric-vehicle iON ST AS tire to Apollo Go from four Chinese cities to ten↗, Beijing and Chongqing among them, and wire tire data into the fleet's pressure and wear alerts ³⁴.

The market pays 2022 prices for an AI-first story

Baidu's Nasdaq shares closed at $78.84 on October 21↗, down 2.1% on the day and 48% this year, near levels last traded in late 2022 ⁵⁶. That is a $21.78 billion market value, 1.49 times sales against a historical median of 2.66 ⁵. Apollo Go, the driverless-taxi arm, is the asset inside that quote: 28 cities, more than 350 million autonomous kilometers driven, over 240 million of them with nobody in the driver's seat ⁷.

The new bets are physical, and none are revenue

Baidu publishes no revenue line for Apollo Go. Its August 18 results↗ price the engine the robotaxis must replace: search advertising fell 19% to RMB13.1 billion, now 52% of General Business revenue, the unit excluding video-streaming arm iQiyi, against 62% a year earlier, and legacy revenue fell 23% ⁷.

AI cloud infrastructure grew 50% to RMB7.3 billion yet shrank 17% from the first quarter, and the AI core fell 8% sequentially ⁷. Group revenue slipped 4% to RMB31.3 billion, and RMB11.4 billion of capital spending against RMB3.4 billion of operating cash flow left free cash flow at minus RMB8.0 billion ⁷.

The bull case runs on other people's money

The believers answer with commitments. Hankook has supplied Apollo Go since signing with Baidu in March 2025, and Hong Kong's Transport Department cleared driverless testing on Airport Island in July, with Baidu's cars logging more than 280,000km in the city ³¹. Baidu holds RMB283.1 billion ($41.7 billion) of cash and investments as it defines them, about double its market value ⁷.

Against that, insiders sold $2.0 million of stock across 12 months and bought none ⁵, the shares still trade near 19 times forward earnings against a 12.75 sector median ⁹, and a class action whose period closed on August 17↗, the day before results, alleges Baidu overstated AI's power to offset the search decline ¹⁰.

The suit and the AI cushion's earlier shrink were covered here on October 15↗ and September 27↗.

Three dates decide it

The free rides end on November 3 ¹. The lead-plaintiff deadline is November 13 ¹⁰. Then the next quarterly report shows whether AI cloud's dip was a pause or a pattern. A tire contract sizes a fleet. It cannot price one.