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Iris Deng

Kuaishou Technology’s shares jumped as much as 10 per cent on Tuesday morning after reports that the Chinese short-video platform was raising new funding for its Kling AI unit at a valuation of US$20 billion.
Kuaishou – often seen as a rival to ByteDance-owned Douyin in China – plans to spin off its video generation service, according to a report by Chinese technology news outlet The LatePost on Monday, citing anonymous sources.
The company is in talks with potential investors, including Tencent Holdings, to raise US$2 billion, according to the report. Kling currently has an annualised revenue run rate (ARR) of US$500 million – about double what it was before Chinese New Year, the report said.
Meanwhile, a separate report by The Information technology website on Monday said that Kuaishou is planning an initial public offering for Kling AI in 2027, citing anonymous sources.
In response to the financing and listing reports, Kuaishou said on Tuesday that the company is “assessing a proposal to restructure” Kling AI that could involve external funding. However, the proposal is still in the preliminary stage, according to an announcement filed to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Kuaishou’s share price rose nearly 2 per cent to close at HK$52.6 on Tuesday.
Kling AI’s monetisation has been gathering pace as its ARR reached US$300 million in January, and the company expected the service’s revenue to “more than double” in 2026, according to Kuaishou co-founder and CEO Cheng Yixiao in an earnings call in March.
ARR is a financial metric used to project a company’s 12-month revenue by extrapolating earnings from a shorter period, like a month or a quarter.
Designed to rival OpenAI’s Sora and Google DeepMind’s Veo, Kling AI had quickly climbed the global rankings since its debut in June 2024. Earlier this year, consultancy Artificial Analysis ranked Kling AI as the world’s top model for image-to-video generation and second in the text-to-video category.
However, the landscape of AI video generation has evolved quickly over the past few months with the high-profile entrance of Alibaba Group Holding’s HappyHorse and the rapid rise of ByteDance Seedance – as well as the abrupt exit of Sora.
Alibaba’s HappyHorse 1.0 currently tops the text-to-video and image-to-video leaderboards on Artificial Analysis, followed by ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 in both categories. Kling 3.0 currently ranks third in the text-to-video leaderboard, and sixth in the image-to-video category.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Kling’s pricing makes it more cost-effective compared with its rivals amid a fast-changing industry landscape, while the 4K output feature in its latest version can address the high-fidelity demands of professional creators in the advertising and film industries, according to a research note by Orient Securities on Monday.
Orient Securities analysts expected Kling to capitalise on the booming AI-generated drama market. “As a high-performance, cost-effective model, Kling is well-positioned to see sustained commercial growth as it expands into new use cases” in AI drama, analysts led by Xiang Wenqian wrote in the report.


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Artificial intelligence (AI)

Kuaishou shares soar as Kling AI eyes US$20 billion valuation in potential spin-off

The logo of Chinese short-video platform Kuaishou is displayed on a smartphone screen in Jinan, Shandong province. Photo: Getty Images

China’s Kuaishou slumps as analysts flag growth pressure despite strong results

The warnings came after Kuaishou reported fourth-quarter revenue of US$5.7 billion. Photo: Getty Images

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Beijing’s Cyberspace Administration launched an investigation following reports of a surge in pornographic streams Photo: Shutterstock

China slaps US$3.7 million fine on Kuaishou over live-streaming e-commerce violation

Chinese regulators are tightening oversight on live-streaming e-commerce platform operators such as Kuaishou Technology.
Photo: Shutterstock

The facade of Kuaishou Technology’s headquarters in Beijing Photo: Getty Images

AI video generation: How China’s Kling challenges Google’s Veo, OpenAI’s Sora

Kling’s motion control feature, which easily lets puppies or any characters dance, fuelled viral trends. Photo: Handout

Zeng Yushen, Kling’s head of operations, speaks at a conference in November 2025. Photo: Handout

Video-generation boom sees China’s Kling AI post US$240 million in annual revenue run rate

Kling AI adoption has expanded amid the growing  use worldwide of artificial intelligence video tools. Photo: Shutterstock 

At an event in Beijing last April, Kuaishou unveiled Kling AI 2.0, the latest version of its generative AI video service. Photo: Ben Jiang

Tech

Tech Trends

The Chinese short-video platform’s shares jumped as much as 10 per cent amid US$20 billion valuation of spin-off, Tencent investor talks


The Chinese short-video platform’s shares jumped as much as 10 per cent amid US$20 billion valuation of spin-off, Tencent investor talks.


.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The Chinese short-video platform’s shares jumped as much as 10 per cent amid US$20 billion valuation of spin-off, Tencent investor talks

The Chinese short-video platform’s shares jumped as much as 10 per cent amid US$20 billion valuation of spin-off, Tencent investor talks