Kuaishou
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Kuaishou Technology (快手科技; stock code: 1024.HK) is a Chinese technology company headquartered in Haidian District, Beijing, best known for operating one of China's largest short-video platforms. Founded in 2011 by Cheng Yixiao and later joined by Su Hua, Kuaishou has grown from a simple GIF-sharing app into a social media and live commerce giant with over 400 million daily active users. The company is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is a major competitor to ByteDance's Douyin (the Chinese counterpart of TikTok) in China's short-video market. Kuaishou has also invested heavily in artificial intelligence research, producing models such as the Kling video generation system, the Kolors image generation model, and the KwaiYii large language model.
Kuaishou traces its origins to March 2011, when Cheng Yixiao launched a mobile application called "GIF Kuaishou" (GIF快手). Cheng, a software engineer who had previously worked at Hewlett-Packard (2007-2009) and Renren Inc. (2009-2011), designed the app as a tool for creating and sharing animated GIF images on mobile devices. The app gained steady traction in its early months and secured seed funding in April 2012.
In late 2012, the app began pivoting from static GIF creation toward short video recording and sharing, reflecting the rapid expansion of mobile internet access across China. In 2013, Cheng was introduced to Su Hua, a Tsinghua University computer science graduate who had worked as an engineer at Google China (2006-2008) and Baidu (2010-2011). Su Hua officially joined the company in November 2013, and the two co-founders rebranded the product as a short-video social platform. Su Hua took on the role of CEO while Cheng Yixiao served as Chief Product Officer (CPO).
By 2013, the platform had accumulated a large user base, and the transition from GIF tool to video community proved to be a turning point. The company secured Series B financing of $10 million from Sequoia Capital China and DCM Ventures in 2014, validating the short-video model.
Kuaishou's user base grew rapidly during the mid-2010s as affordable smartphones and mobile data plans spread throughout China, particularly in lower-tier cities and rural areas. In 2016, the company received Series C funding from Baidu and China Media Capital. Tencent led Kuaishou's $350 million Series D round in 2017 at a valuation reported to be between $18 billion and $20 billion.
Tencent continued its backing by joining Sequoia China in a $1 billion Series E round in 2018. By 2019, the company had surpassed 200 million daily active users. In December 2019, Kuaishou completed a massive $3 billion Series F round led by Tencent, which contributed approximately $2 billion. Other participants included Singapore's Temasek, Boyu Capital, YF Capital, and Sequoia Capital. This final pre-IPO round valued Kuaishou at approximately $28.6 billion. Across all funding rounds, the company raised a total of roughly $4.8 billion.
Kuaishou made its public market debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on February 5, 2021, under the stock code 1024.HK. The company priced its shares at HK$115 each, raising approximately HK$41.3 billion ($5.3 billion) in what became the largest technology IPO globally at that time since Uber's 2019 listing.
Shares opened at HK$338, representing a 194% surge from the IPO price. The stock closed its first day of trading at HK$300, a gain of roughly 160%. Within two weeks, shares briefly reached HK$417, giving the company a peak market capitalization exceeding $160 billion. Tencent remained the single largest external shareholder with a stake of approximately 21.6%, while 5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Venture Capital), the company's earliest institutional backer, held about 16.7%.
On October 29, 2021, Kuaishou announced that Su Hua would step down as CEO, with co-founder Cheng Yixiao assuming the role. Su Hua continued to serve as Chairman of the Board, focusing on long-term strategy. The move came during a broader trend of Chinese tech founders stepping back from operational roles amid regulatory scrutiny of the technology sector.
In October 2023, Su Hua resigned from his position as Chairman of the Board. Cheng Yixiao then assumed both the CEO and Chairman roles, consolidating leadership of the company. The board stated that having a single person in both positions would improve operational efficiency and strategic alignment.
The core Kuaishou app allows users to create, upload, and share short videos and live streams. The platform is distinguished by its algorithm, which emphasizes broad traffic distribution rather than concentrating views on a small number of viral creators. This design philosophy encourages a wider range of content creators and fosters stronger community engagement, particularly among users in lower-tier cities and rural areas of China.
Content on Kuaishou spans a wide range of categories including daily life, comedy, food, agriculture, crafts, music, and education. The platform also supports live streaming, which serves both as an entertainment channel and as a vehicle for e-commerce transactions.
Kuaishou launched its first international product, Kwai, in May 2017, initially targeting markets in Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, and Russia. The app saw early success in South Korea, where it was downloaded 10 million times in less than a month.
In April 2020, the company launched SnackVideo on Google Play, targeting markets in South and Southeast Asia. SnackVideo gained significant popularity in India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Meanwhile, Kwai achieved particularly strong penetration in Latin America, becoming one of the top-ranked free apps in Brazil's iPhone App Store.
By 2024, Kwai had accumulated more than 20 million monthly active users in the Middle East and North Africa region. Kuaishou opened an office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and continued to expand its presence across Brazil, the Middle East, and North Africa. However, the company exited the United States market in 2021 when it shut down its rival app to TikTok in that market.
KuaiYing is Kuaishou's video editing application, which serves as both a standalone creative tool and an integration point for the company's AI-powered features. The Kling video generation model was first made available for public testing within the KuaiYing app in June 2024.
Kuaishou generates revenue through three primary segments: online marketing services, live streaming, and other services (which includes e-commerce commissions).
| Segment | FY2024 Revenue (RMB) | YoY Change | Share of Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online Marketing Services | 72.4 billion | +20.1% | 57.1% |
| Live Streaming | 37.1 billion | -5.1% | 29.2% |
| Other Services (incl. E-commerce) | 17.4 billion | +23.4% | 13.7% |
| Total Revenue | 126.9 billion | +11.8% | 100% |
Online marketing is Kuaishou's largest revenue source, accounting for 57.1% of total revenue in 2024. This segment includes in-feed advertisements, brand promotions, and performance-based marketing solutions. Growth in this area has been driven by AI-enhanced advertising tools that improve ad targeting and conversion rates.
Live streaming contributed 29.2% of total revenue in 2024. Kuaishou's live streaming model revolves around virtual gifting: viewers purchase virtual items (ranging from simple stickers and emojis to more expensive digital gifts like virtual cars or houses) and send them to their favorite streamers during live broadcasts. Kuaishou takes a commission from each transaction. The system is intentionally gamified, with social recognition features that encourage repeat spending. While this segment remains large, it experienced a 5.1% year-over-year decline in 2024 as the company's revenue mix shifted toward advertising and e-commerce.
Kuaishou has built a growing e-commerce business centered on live commerce, where merchants and influencers sell products directly to viewers during live streams. In 2024, total e-commerce gross merchandise volume (GMV) reached RMB 1,389.6 billion (approximately $190 billion), representing a 17.3% year-over-year increase. During the Double 11 (Singles' Day) sales event in 2024, more than 39 million users participated in group buying promotions, and over 2,500 live-streaming rooms each achieved GMV exceeding RMB 1 million.
Short video e-commerce GMV grew by more than 50% year-over-year in Q4 2024, reflecting the increasing importance of non-live-stream sales formats. Kuaishou's "Trusted Shopping" initiative, which focuses on product quality and consumer protection, has been a key driver of e-commerce growth.
Kuaishou reported strong financial results for the full year 2024, with notable improvements in both revenue growth and profitability.
| Metric | FY2024 | FY2023 | YoY Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Revenue | RMB 126.9B | RMB 113.5B | +11.8% |
| Gross Profit | RMB 69.3B | RMB 57.4B | +20.7% |
| Gross Profit Margin | 54.6% | 50.6% | +4.0pp |
| Net Profit | RMB 15.3B | RMB 6.4B | +139.8% |
| Adjusted Net Profit | RMB 17.7B | RMB 10.3B | +72.5% |
| R&D Expenses | RMB 12.2B | RMB 12.3B | -0.8% |
| Selling & Marketing | RMB 41.1B | - | - |
The company's adjusted net profit margin reached 14.0% for the full year, a significant improvement over prior years. The improvement in gross margin was driven by a shift in the revenue mix toward higher-margin online marketing services and operational efficiencies.
In the third quarter of 2025, Kuaishou reported total revenue of RMB 35.6 billion, a 14.2% increase year-over-year. Gross profit rose 14.9% to RMB 19.4 billion, and operating profit surged 69.9% to RMB 5.3 billion. Adjusted net profit for the quarter was RMB 5.0 billion, up 26.3% year-over-year.
Kuaishou's user base has grown steadily, with both daily and monthly active users reaching record highs in 2025.
| Period | Average DAU | Average MAU |
|---|---|---|
| FY2023 | 382.5 million | 700.4 million |
| FY2024 | 399.4 million | 709.7 million |
| Q4 2024 | 401.0 million | 735.6 million |
| Q1 2025 | 408.9 million | 714.8 million |
| Q3 2025 | 416.2 million | 731.1 million |
The growth from 382.5 million average DAU in 2023 to 416.2 million in Q3 2025 reflects Kuaishou's continued ability to attract and retain users despite the broader maturation of China's short-video market.
Kuaishou has invested heavily in AI research and development, with R&D spending of approximately RMB 12.2 billion in 2024. The company's AI efforts span large language models, image generation, and video generation, with applications across content creation, advertising optimization, e-commerce, and user experience.
KwaiYii (快意) is Kuaishou's proprietary large language model, first released in August 2023 with a 13-billion parameter version (KwaiYii-13B). Within six months, the team developed 66-billion and 175-billion parameter versions to serve different business needs.
| Model Version | Parameters | Performance Level |
|---|---|---|
| KwaiYii-13B | 13 billion | Approaches GPT-3.5 |
| KwaiYii-66B | 66 billion | Intermediate |
| KwaiYii-175B | 175 billion | Surpasses GPT-3.5, approaches GPT-4 |
The KwaiYii-175B model was trained on trillions of tokens and achieved industry-leading results on benchmarks including MMLU and C-Eval. It received the highest rating (Level 5) from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology's "Trusted AI" large model evaluation, making it the first LLM in China to achieve that classification.
KwaiYii powers several internal applications including video script generation, real-time live streaming script generation, advertising customer service, and digital human technology.
Kolors (also marketed as KeTu, 可图) is Kuaishou's text-to-image generation model based on latent diffusion. The model has 2.7 billion parameters and was trained on billions of text-image pairs. It uses a General Language Model (GLM) as its text encoder, supporting bilingual Chinese and English prompts with a context window of up to 256 tokens.
Kolors is built on the SDXL model architecture and integrates ChatGLM technology for improved bilingual understanding. The Kuaishou team reported that Kolors outperforms both open-source models like SDXL and SD3 and closed-source models like Midjourney on certain benchmarks.
Kuaishou open-sourced Kolors under the Apache-2.0 license for academic research, with the model available on both GitHub and Hugging Face. Commercial use requires registration with the licensor.
Kolors 2.0, released in 2025, introduced improvements in prompt adherence, cinematic quality, and artistic style expression. It added capabilities such as image restyling, inpainting, and outpainting, along with support for over 60 stylistic effects.
Kling is Kuaishou's flagship AI video generation model, first unveiled in June 2024. Built on a diffusion-based transformer architecture (DiT) enhanced with a proprietary 3D variational autoencoder (VAE), Kling can generate videos up to two minutes long at 1080p resolution and 30 frames per second.
Kling became available to global users via a web portal in July 2024 and has since gone through multiple major version upgrades.
| Version | Release Date | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Kling 1.0 | June 2024 | Text-to-video, image-to-video, up to 2 min at 1080p |
| Kling 1.6 | December 2024 | Improved text responsiveness, motion quality, color accuracy, multi-image reference |
| Kling 2.0 | April 2025 | Cinematic quality improvements, DeepSeek integration |
| Kling 2.1 | May 2025 | Multiple quality modes |
| Kling 2.5 Turbo | September 2025 | Enhanced text-to-video and image-to-video, reduced costs |
| Kling O1 | December 2025 | Unified multimodal model (text, video, image, subject inputs) |
| Kling Video 2.6 | December 2025 | Simultaneous audio-visual generation |
Kling AI achieved an annualized revenue run rate (ARR) exceeding $100 million in March 2025, only ten months after launch. By December 2025, the ARR reached $240 million, with monthly revenue surpassing $20 million. As of December 2025, Kling AI served over 60 million creators worldwide, had generated more than 600 million videos, and maintained partnerships with over 30,000 enterprise users.
Kling AI uses a dual monetization model: individual subscriptions (priced at RMB 66 to RMB 666 per month, roughly $9 to $93) and enterprise API services for corporate clients and developers. In Q1 2025, roughly 70% of Kling's revenue came from individual subscriptions, with the remaining 30% from enterprise clients.
In March 2025, Kuaishou integrated DeepSeek-R1 into the Kling AI platform, allowing users to leverage the large language model for brainstorming and prompt optimization before generating videos or images.
For a detailed treatment of Kling's architecture, capabilities, and competitive positioning, see the dedicated Kling AI article.
Kuaishou's primary competitor in China's short-video market is ByteDance, which operates Douyin (the domestic Chinese version of TikTok). Douyin holds the leading position in China's short-form video market by user base, while Kuaishou occupies a strong second place.
The two platforms have historically targeted somewhat different demographics. Douyin built its early user base in first- and second-tier cities with polished, trend-driven content, while Kuaishou cultivated a loyal following in lower-tier cities and rural areas with more authentic, grassroots content. Over time, both platforms have expanded to overlap significantly in their user demographics.
Kuaishou's algorithm distributes traffic more evenly among creators compared to Douyin's approach, which tends to concentrate views on trending content. This design choice fosters stronger trust-based relationships between creators and their audiences, which in turn supports higher conversion rates in live commerce.
| Feature | Kuaishou | Douyin (ByteDance) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Market | Lower-tier cities, rural China | Tier 1-2 cities, trending content |
| Algorithm Philosophy | Broad distribution, community-focused | Engagement-optimized, viral-driven |
| DAU (2024) | ~400 million | ~700+ million (estimated) |
| E-commerce GMV (2024) | RMB 1.39 trillion | Significantly larger |
| International Version | Kwai, SnackVideo | TikTok |
| AI Video Generation | Kling | Jimeng (various models) |
Beyond ByteDance, Kuaishou also faces competition from Bilibili (in longer-form video content), WeChat Channels (backed by Tencent), and various other short-video and live streaming platforms in China.
In the AI generative media space, Kling competes with OpenAI's Sora, Runway's Gen series, Pika, Google's Veo, and other video generation platforms.
| Name | Role | Background |
|---|---|---|
| Cheng Yixiao | Co-founder, Chairman, CEO | Northeastern University (Software Engineering); former HP, Renren |
| Su Hua | Co-founder, Executive Director | Tsinghua University (Computer Software); former Google China, Baidu |
| Shareholder | Approximate Stake |
|---|---|
| Tencent | 21.6% |
| 5Y Capital (Morningside) | 16.7% |
| Sequoia Capital China | Significant minority |
| Baidu | Minority |
| Temasek | Minority |
As of December 31, 2024, Kuaishou Technology employed 24,718 people, a decrease of approximately 6.4% compared to the previous year.
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| March 2011 | GIF Kuaishou app launched by Cheng Yixiao |
| Late 2012 | Pivot from GIF tool to short video platform |
| November 2013 | Su Hua joins as co-founder and CEO |
| 2014 | Series B funding ($10M) from Sequoia China and DCM |
| 2017 | Tencent leads $350M Series D; Kwai launched internationally |
| 2018 | $1B Series E led by Tencent and Sequoia China |
| 2019 | 200M+ DAU; $3B Series F led by Tencent |
| February 2021 | IPO on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (1024.HK); raised $5.3B |
| October 2021 | Su Hua steps down as CEO; Cheng Yixiao becomes CEO |
| August 2023 | KwaiYii-13B large language model released |
| October 2023 | Su Hua steps down as Chairman; Cheng Yixiao assumes Chairman role |
| June 2024 | Kling AI video generation model launched |
| July 2024 | Kolors image generation model open-sourced; Kling opens global beta |
| FY2024 | Revenue reaches RMB 126.9B; DAU surpasses 400M |
| March 2025 | Kling AI reaches $100M ARR |
| December 2025 | Kling O1 and Video 2.6 launched; Kling ARR reaches $240M |