"Kuaishou, who are you? Where did you come from? Where are you going?" | After AI generated 100 million in revenue, Kuaishou's path forward and ambitions

Expected, yet surprising — Kuaishou mentioned AI more than a hundred times during its latest earnings call.

Questions about "Kuaishou, who are you? Where did you come from? Where are you going?" came flooding in:

What kind of company will Kuaishou become?

Is this a short-video company? Or an e-commerce company?

Or is it quietly transforming into a real AI tech enterprise?

Keling AI's emergence is penetrating every corner of Kuaishou's commercial matrix at unprecedented speed, powered by AI.

Since commercialization began, Keling AI's cumulative revenue has exceeded 100 million yuan.

This figure has undoubtedly shocked everyone looking to grab a slice of the AI pie, and the observers watching from outside the dinner table.

Created with Keling AI, source: X user @BennettWaisbren

Labels like "rustic," "down-to-earth," and "lao tie 666" that once defined Kuaishou are being transformed one by one through AI empowerment, becoming Kuaishou's new tech calling cards.

In 2024, the Hong Kong stock market saw a wave of capital narratives: Xiaomi bet big on smart vehicles + AI, while Kuaishou pushed Keling AI hard and integrated AI across its internal business lines and product matrix.

Xiaomi SU7 sales exceeded expectations, and its AI strategy advanced on all fronts. With R&D spending of 24.1 billion yuan in 2024, up 25.9% year-over-year, it gave all Xiaomi believers a shot of confidence. Lu Weibing also revealed externally that Xiaomi's total R&D investment from 2021-2025 is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan, with over 30 billion yuan in 2025 alone, of which 25% will go to AI R&D. He emphasized: AI technology will land across all Xiaomi terminal products, empowering the "Human × Car × Home" ecosystem.

On the other side, on June 6, 2024, Kuaishou's "Keling" video generation large model officially launched on its website, with the Kuaiying App opening for invitation-only testing. Within just one month, the base model accelerated upgrades, internal testing opened fully, and the membership system went live — the bugle for commercialization sounded.

In June 2024, Keling AI charged into the AI video industry.

At the time, Keling's performance in the viral "Will Smith eating spaghetti" challenge was excellent by any measure. As a fun challenge sweeping the internet, it attracted countless netizens' attention and became an unofficial benchmark for testing AI video generation capabilities.

Freshly launched, Keling already stood out and won praise amid the platform-wide frenzy.

Source: Reddit user @r/ChatGPT

Charging into AI Video Generation

This year, multiple major internet companies adopted the slogan "using AI as a new business engine," embracing the AI wave whether by choice or necessity. Kuaishou's response was swift enough to qualify it as a pioneer.

Analyzing backward from the present moment, Kuaishou's initial decision — launching Keling AI and making the heavy investment to switch its business engine and activate its entire commercial matrix with AI — was undoubtedly correct.

This can be clearly judged from several data points:

1. Keling AI's technical capabilities and content creation have gained market recognition, with daily video generation exceeding 30 million clips.
2. In commercial applications, daily consumption of Kuaishou AIGC marketing materials reached 20 million yuan.

This massive resource investment successfully propelled Keling AI into the 2024 Year of AI Video Models.

How many companies competed in this colosseum throughout the year? Let me give a few examples: Pika, Hailuo (Minimax), Mochi, Adobe Firefly Video, Sora, Runway, Luma, plus the Veo series unveiled at Google I/O in May 2024 (which will likely be Keling's strongest competitor in coming years).

Of course, among these, Sora hasn't completed full commercialization. But OpenAI's reputation is so powerful that Sora's release, even pending, has captured global attention.

With this Sword of Damocles hanging over all video model manufacturers, the entire AI video generation industry began tilting resources toward business and doubling down.

In this brutal enough "AI video model arms race," Keling's iteration accelerated rapidly.

Within one month of its official debut, Kuaishou's Keling AI underwent three iterative updates. Meanwhile, applicant numbers approached 700,000.

How to describe the endless industry-wide grinding and the resulting evolution in video quality?

Exclamations from overseas netizens prove it best.

A 20-year VFX animator on X, @brain_racked, summarized the performance of Runway Gen-2 in May 2024 versus Keling 1.6 in January 2025.

In just a few months, text responsiveness and visual presentation evolved by what could almost be called a qualitative leap.

Source: X user @brain_racked

Keling 1.6's performance on details — human-object interaction, light-shadow transitions, and background environmental coherence — all demonstrate its formidable strength in image generation.

Even though various AI video models have been grinding themselves to death on that "scorched earth" for a year now.

But from a larger time span, the underlying technology is all extremely novel and in a hyper-rapid iterative development cycle, still set to strengthen significantly in the next 1-2 years. Whether domestically or internationally, AI video models never appear alone in ecosystem structures; each model has unique advantages paired with content ecosystems.

Keling AI won the first half with superior image quality, natural and reasonable dynamic performance, and enhanced text adherence capabilities. But the rapid iteration and technical leadership and cost-performance ratio of its backend team will quickly fill out Kuaishou's ecological niche.

In August 2024, Kuaishou officially launched OpenAPI, targeting B-end customers.

After several months of refinement, Kuaishou has built a multi-end, cross-platform product matrix around Keling AI. Workflows with Keling as the core have gradually matured, and with high cost-performance and low operational barriers, it has firmly occupied舆论阵地 overseas.

For example, in the video below, an X creator used a Keling AI + Suno + Sora combination, produced by an amateur creator at just $2-10 in cloud GPU costs.

Source: X user @@rohanpaul_ai

Source: X user @AleRVG

Another example: using a Magnific + Kling 1.6 + Freepik Upscale 4K + sound effects combination, one can easily achieve "surreal underwater cinematic visuals."

Source: X user @MayorKingAI

"If a team or 2-3 AI professionals invested $10,000 to make a film, the effect would rival a million-dollar blockbuster."

"Star Wars cost billions to produce, and now AI video creators can make such films for a few dollars, just using o3-mini-high to write scripts, Imagen 3 or Flux pro for images, kling 1.6 for video....."

These ideas may be immature for now, but rapidly iterating Keling AI probably makes it hard for cutting-edge commentators to issue a definitive "impossible."

AI Video Generation Competition Intensifies

By mid-2024, besides Keling AI, the two biggest stars were Luma and Runway. Runway Gen-3, with its detail and consistency, became the choice for professional projects; Luma Dream Machine focused more on natural, fluid motion with visually striking results.

Source: X user @mhdfaran

While both technologies developed rapidly, against the industry backdrop of rapid iteration of video foundation models, these two companies' update speeds seemed to slow down somewhat.

By year-end, Keling AI 1.6 and Google Veo 2 were released.

The AI video generation field welcomed two new kings, and Keling AI met its biggest competitor.

VEO2-generated video, source: X user @8co28

Keling 1.6 rapidly improved image quality and dynamic performance after its late-2024 release, while Veo 2 continued breaking through in high resolution and camera control.

By comparison, Luma and Runway, while still advantaged in their respective strengths (Luma's motion fluidity, Runway's high-fidelity image quality), seemed not to fully keep pace with the industry's overall acceleration.

With video quality not significantly improving while prices remained relatively high, AI users rapidly began churning.

From this point, the AI video generation industry formed a two-pole, multi-peak pattern.

Google Veo-2 and Keling AI 1.6 became indisputable dual kings. Other video models like Runway Gen-3, Pika, Luma Ray, MiniMax, and so on became tail-end eaters. Of course, through continuous updates, these slightly lagging competitors occasionally produce some highlight features.

Sora needs no further mention — countless people waited day and night, only to receive a product so below expectations......

In any case, Google Veo-2 and Keling AI 1.6 have firmly secured their thrones in the AI video generation industry.

While Keling AI 1.6 still can't beat Veo-2 in generation quality, Kuaishou has some confidence based on its massive user accumulation.

Source: X user @HBCoop_

Besides Keling AI, What Other Cards Is Kuaishou Playing?

Keling AI continues innovating in scenario-based applications, including virtual digital human livestreaming solutions and AIGC short drama creation.

Meanwhile, AIGC short dramas like Xing'anling Strange Events, CCTV's Chinese Mythology and Monkey King, Douyin's Sanxingdui: Future Revelation, and Zhou Hongyi's Uncle Red Uses AI to Take Me Through Time have sparked speculation that "the next AI风口 is in short dramas."

Kuaishou also followed the trend, launching its first AIGC micro-drama Shanhai Mirage: Splitting Waves.

Beyond Keling, Kuaishou is using AI to land in rich commercial scenarios.

Content material creation, e-commerce shopping guides, and advertising marketing have all adopted AI as a new engine.

• In 2024, Kuaishou's advertising revenue grew strongly, with online marketing services revenue reaching 72.419 billion yuan, up 20.09% year-over-year......
• Magnetic Bull as an intelligent placement tool, integrating traffic, data, and algorithms to achieve full-chain optimization from exposure to conversion......
• In Q4 2024, daily consumption of AIGC marketing materials exceeded 30 million yuan......
• E-commerce business also performed brilliantly, with 2024 GMV reaching 1.39 trillion yuan, up 17.3% year-over-year......

These numbers all illustrate one thing: Kuaishou's AI engine is starting up, and it will only accelerate.

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook came from behind because he wasn't a technology supremacist — he transformed social networking from a technical concept into a reality for 1 billion users. But times turn, and DeepSeek's emergence made this Meta leader establish a "war room" to rapidly parse DeepSeek's technical framework.

Pure technical peaks struggle to sustain victory at every node of every era; the ability to rapidly pivot market scale and successfully commercialize according to market demand may better suit this rapidly shifting AI age. Simplicity is power, ecosystem is victory.

Kuaishou breaks through from AI, relying on a comprehensive AI penetration strategy.

When traditional business engines fully pivot to AI business engines, a massive content ecosystem + a huge loyal user base gives Kuaishou confidence: its entire commercial matrix can be re-empowered with AI.

Just as its livestreaming business faces market doubts about being forced to rapidly narrow, Kuaishou is using AI to help all its businesses break through — this wonderful chemical reaction is worth watching in full.

Labels like "rustic," "super下沉 market," and "lao tie" were once welded firmly onto Kuaishou's body, but AI will transform Kuaishou's space-time.

When "rustic" meets cutting-edge tech, when "lao tie" embraces AI innovation, Kuaishou is writing a brand new story about transformation and breakthrough.

This is not just one company's evolution, but a social experiment in how AI reshapes traditional content platforms.

In this era where AI defines the future, Kuaishou has already given its answer: it came from the fertile soil of grassroots culture, and now, with AI as its wings, full of ambition, it wants to fly higher.