Benefiting from the strong growth of the artificial intelligence (AI) business, Baidu announced better-than-expected quarterly results on Thursday.

Details: Total revenue rose to 31.35 billion yuan ($4.84 billion) from 26.03 billion yuan ($4.02 billion) in the second quarter ended June 30, topping analysts' average estimate of 30.96 billion yuan ($4.78 billion), according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

"Baidu Core revenue grew 27% year over year in the second quarter, boosted by AI cloud growing 71% year over year," said Herman Yu, CFO of Baidu. "Baidu's search and feed business was solid, and we continue to execute and lead on our new AI business, including AI cloud, autonomous driving and smart assistant." 

The company also said Yu has been appointed chief strategy officer but will continue to serve as CFO until a successor is found.

Baidu's video streaming affiliate, iQIYI, posted a 15% increase in advertising revenue and subscribers grew to 106.2 million by June.

Apollo L4 autonomous driving accumulated 7.5 million test miles, up 152% year over year. Earlier this year, Baidu's autonomous driving unit Apollo launched paid robotaxi services in Beijing and Guangzhou.

Context: Along with other tech giants, Baidu is facing heightened scrutiny from Beijing's regulators who have raised concerns over data security and user privacy. On a conference call, Robin Li, chairman and chief executive of Baidu, said that the tightened scrutiny hasn't exerted a negative impact on its operations yet.