The Chinese tech heavyweight Baidu Inc reported on Thursday that its total revenue reached 33.6 billion yuan ($4.78 billion) in the third quarter of this year, while the profits from its core businesses stood at 7.54 billion yuan, an increase of 17 percent year-on-year.

Baidu's large language model Ernie handled about 1.5 billion API (application programming interface) daily calls by early November. This represents a substantial 30-fold increase from the 50 million announced a year ago.

Robin Li, co-founder and CEO of Baidu, said in a statement that the company remains steadfast in its artificial intelligence-focused strategy and was confident in the long-term trajectory. "As we further scale up AI, we are emboldened to find how it can further drive innovations and create value for consumers, enterprises and society at large," Li said.

In the field of autonomous driving, Baidu's driverless ride-hailing service Apollo Go provided 988,000 rides in the third quarter of this year, up 20 percent year-on-year. Its sixth generation autonomous vehicle is now operating on public roads in multiple cities across the nation.

fanfeifei@chinadaily.com.cn