In-Depth Analysis of Kuaishou Keling AI's Commercialization Path and Profit Model

Since its launch in early 2024, Kuaishou Keling AI has shown significant growth in commercialization. From a financial perspective, the product has completed the critical transition phase from “capability demonstration” to “commercial validation”.

Keling AI’s revenue growth has shown an accelerating trend: revenue reached RMB 150 million in Q1 2025, exceeded RMB 250 million in Q2 2025, and topped RMB 300 million in Q3 2025[1][2]. Its monthly revenue exceeded $20 million (approximately RMB 140 million) in December 2025, corresponding to an Annualized Run Rate (ARR) of $240 million (approximately RMB 1.68 billion)[3]. Notably, this came less than 10 months after it announced its ARR exceeded $100 million in March 2025, achieving leapfrog growth in ARR scale[3].

During the Q3 2025 earnings call, Kuaishou management raised its full-year revenue forecast for Keling AI from $60 million at the start of the year to $140 million (approximately RMB 1 billion), representing a growth of over 100%[4][5]. JPMorgan analyst Chen Qi predicts that Keling AI’s revenue will grow 62% year-on-year to RMB 1.7 billion in 2026[5].

As of December 2025, Keling AI has over 60 million creators worldwide, with a total of over 600 million videos and 344 million images generated[3][6]. In overseas markets, Keling AI has delivered outstanding performance: according to Sensor Tower data, Keling AI ranks first in the graphics and design app download rankings in multiple overseas markets including South Korea and Singapore, with the US market contributing 46.1% of downloads[4][7].

Keling AI’s revenue structure features a clear dual-drive model:

P-side paid subscription members contribute nearly 70% of Keling AI’s operating revenue[1][6]. P-side users mainly include professionals such as self-media video creators and advertising and marketing practitioners. This group has both communication attributes and payment capabilities, making them the core audience for current video generation large models[1]. The subscription-based business model brings stable cash flow to Kuaishou, effectively alleviating the pressure caused by growth fluctuations in traditional businesses[6].

B-side API services account for approximately 30% of revenue, with over 30,000 enterprise clients including well-known companies such as Xiaomi and BlueFocus, and API call volume exceeding 40 million[3][6]. Keling AI opens modules such as virtual try-on and batch rendering to e-commerce platforms and advertisers via APIs, entering the film and television production field. It launched the world’s first AI microfilm with Starlight Shorts and the first domestic AIGC original fantasy micro-short drama[7].

In terms of geographical distribution, 70% of revenue comes from overseas markets and 30% from the domestic market. The globalized revenue structure effectively reduces the risk of relying on a single market[6]. Over 80% of web traffic comes from overseas, making Keling the first to achieve international revenue scale[4].

Keling AI adopts a diversified pricing strategy, forming a composite business model of “subscription + pay-as-you-go + API services”:

Keling AI has established a comprehensive membership tier system, including multiple levels such as non-member, Gold Member, Platinum Member, Diamond Member, and Black Gold Member[8]. It uses “Inspiration Points” as the billing unit, and users can receive corresponding Inspiration Point rewards when purchasing memberships. For example, Black Gold Members can receive 10,000 Inspiration Points during limited-time events[8].

Taking the Keling 2.6 model as an example, for generating a 5-second video, the Kuaishou 1.6 model charges 20 Inspiration Points for the “Standard Mode” and 35 Inspiration Points for the High-Quality Mode; while the Keling 2.6 model only supports the High-Quality Mode, charging 50 Inspiration Points[5]. As model versions are upgraded, pricing is adjusted accordingly, further expanding commercialization space[5].

For enterprise clients, Keling AI provides API call services, billed by call volume or processing volume. Over the past year, Keling has cut prices twice significantly, with the API cost of Keling 2.5 Turbo reduced by approximately 30%[7].

Keling AI maintains a high frequency of version iterations, which is a key foundation for its commercial success. Since its launch in June 2024, Keling has released over 8 major version updates. Senior Vice President Gai Kun described its iteration speed as “a frantic sprint”[7].

Launched in December 2025, the “Motion Control” feature allows users to convert static images into animated videos by directly drawing motion paths on the images. It has extremely low barriers to entry but enormous creative potential[1][7]. This feature quickly gained popularity in overseas markets, driving a rapid rise in Keling App’s ranking on the iOS Free Apps Chart in multiple mainstream markets including Europe, the US, and Asia, and attracting a large number of new overseas users[4][7].

The Keling 2.6 model is the first true “audio-visual simultaneous generation” model, capable of outputting a complete 10-second video including natural language, action sound effects, and ambient sounds in a single generation, changing the tedious process of traditional AI video generation that requires post-production dubbing[4].

In December 2025, Keling released the world’s first unified multimodal video model “Keling O1”, which supports local modifications to videos via natural language instructions or image references, allowing users to complete the entire creative process from generation to modification in one stop[7].

In authoritative AI video evaluations, Keling’s text-to-video capability achieved a win rate of 205% compared to Google Veo2 and 367% compared to Meta Sora, leading significantly in key indicators such as “text relevance, image quality, and dynamic smoothness”[6]. On the global benchmark testing website Artificial Analysis, Keling is the only Chinese model ranked among the top three in both text-to-video and image-to-video performance[7].

A research report from Orient Securities pointed out that Kuaishou has 40 million short videos uploaded daily, and has been clearly labeling videos for precise distribution all year round, providing rich video materials for Keling’s iteration[7]. This deep integration with a content platform gives Keling unique advantages in productization and scenario implementation[4].

Keling is known as an essential tool in creator communities for its top-tier output quality and extremely high cost-effectiveness[5]. Compared to similar products, Keling maintains technological leadership while adopting a more competitive pricing strategy[5].

Keling AI has formed significant ecological synergy with Kuaishou’s core business, which is an important advantage of its commercialization model:

P-side users of Keling can publish generated content on the Kuaishou main app, enriching the platform’s content ecosystem and enhancing advertising value[6]. This closed-loop model of “AI tool + content platform” has verified a replicable commercialization path: AI does not need to be commercialized independently away from content platforms, but can be embedded into the content production process itself to become a new paid touchpoint[2].

AI technology has improved the advertising delivery effect of external merchants. In Q3 2025, Kuaishou’s online marketing business revenue reached RMB 20.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 14%; AIGC materials contributed over RMB 3 billion; the conversion efficiency of advertisers using AI materials was 10-20% higher than the industry average[7].

AI continuously optimizes the delivery structure of Kuaishou merchants. In Q3 2025, the proportion of internal loop consumption of Kuaishou’s full-site promotion products increased to 65%, and the investment of small and medium-sized merchants grew by over 30% year-on-year[7].

The AI video generation field is in a stage of rapid development, with a relatively concentrated competition landscape. From a global perspective, Yu Zhonghai, Deputy General Manager of the Research Department at CICC, pointed out that the global market size was approximately $600 million in 2024, and from a medium-term perspective, the combined market size of P-side and B-side productivity tools is expected to reach the $10 billion level[4][5].

In the current competition landscape, Keling AI firmly ranks in the first echelon of global video generation models. According to calculations by Orient Securities, Kuaishou Keling currently has a market share of approximately 20%, occupying a leading global position[5]. In terms of ARR scale, Keling’s ARR reaches $240 million, placing it in the same camp as Runway, Perplexity AI, and Cohere, which have ARR scales of $200 million to $500 million, ranking 14th globally[7].

The main players directly competing with Keling AI in the current market include:

• International Vendors
  : OpenAI Sora, Google Veo, Runway
• Domestic Vendors
  : MiniMax Conch, Aisi Technology PixVerse, ByteDance Dreamina AI, Shenshu Technology

Excluding AGI players such as OpenAI and Google, most of the core vendors are Chinese[4]. Notably, in December 2025, Alibaba Cloud released the new generation Wanxiang 2.6 series models, and Volcano Engine launched the Seedance 1.5 Pro audio-visual creation model, making competition in the domestic video generation track increasingly fierce[1].

Analysts from Founder Securities believe that the sustainability of Keling’s competitiveness is rooted in two points: first, the technological gap between leading players is gradually narrowing; second, the entry barrier for video large models is extremely high, involving full-chain capabilities from data and computing power to engineering implementation. It is not possible to catch up solely through capital investment, which builds a moat for existing leading players[5].

Currently, Keling AI’s paid users are mainly concentrated among P-side professional creators. Cheng Yixiao, Founder and CEO of Kuaishou Technology, stated: “Currently, our main focus is still on professional creators, but in the future, we will further productize Keling AI’s technical capabilities, combine them with social interaction, and accelerate the commercialization of C-side applications”[1].

For C-side users, productization and socialization are inevitable paths. Cheng Yixiao has positioned the overall direction of Keling AI’s subsequent C-side development as “social interaction”[1]. Kuaishou’s “AI tool + content challenge” gameplay in overseas markets has become quite representative, with user activities such as the “Who is the Dance King Competition” centered around the Motion Control feature forming obvious communication momentum on overseas social platforms[2].

Behind the revenue growth of Keling AI and the better-than-expected overall progress of the AI business is Kuaishou’s continuous investment in computing power. On one hand, user demand for video generation models continues to grow, and Kuaishou has expanded Keling AI’s inference-side computing power multiple times; on the other hand, as models iterate at an accelerated pace, Kuaishou has also begun to increase training computing power to maintain Keling AI’s technological competitiveness[1].

Jin Bing, CFO of Kuaishou, introduced during the Q3 2025 earnings call that Kuaishou expects the group’s overall Capex expenditure to achieve mid-to-high double-digit year-on-year growth in 2025, and capital expenditure in the next 1-2 years will focus on computing power upgrade and technology deepening[1][3].

When Keling is no longer just an independent product but begins to impact efficiency, marginal costs, and business certainty, the significance of AI to Kuaishou goes beyond the scope of “revenue increment” and is now influencing how the market values Kuaishou[2].

CMB International predicts that the global creative application market size will reach $54.6 billion by 2027, with the penetration rate of AI creative applications expected to reach 11%[4]. From a long-term perspective, vendors with underlying model capabilities will seize pricing power, and with large-scale application and architecture optimization, gross profit margins will continue to improve. The video generation industry is expected to transition from the “technology verification phase” to the “commercialization acceleration phase”[4].

Despite the smooth commercialization progress of Keling AI, it still faces the following challenges:

Major players such as ByteDance and Alibaba have entered the video generation track one after another, making market competition increasingly fierce, which may lead to price wars and compressed profit margins[6].

User loyalty to AI tools is relatively low, and users may stop paying as their novelty wears off, requiring continuous functional innovation to maintain user retention[6].

The training and inference of video generation large models require a huge amount of computing power resources. Kuaishou’s GPU computing power utilization rate has been below 10% for a long time, and this inefficient resource use severely restricts the profitability of the AI business[6].

AI video generation technology is in a stage of rapid development, with extremely fast technological iteration speed. If Kuaishou cannot maintain continuous R&D investment and technological innovation, it may be overtaken by competitors[6].

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[1] Topping Overseas Rankings, Surrounded by Strong Domestic Rivals: Keling AI’s Monthly Revenue Surges to RMB 140 Million

[2] After a 15% Gain in Two Days, the Market Starts to Re-calculate Kuaishou’s AI Value

[3] Kuaishou Keling AI: December Revenue Exceeds $20 Million, ARR Surpasses $240 Million

[4] Stock Market Overview | Kuaishou Keling AI Ignites Overseas Markets, Stock Price Has Risen Over 18% Since 2026

[5] ARR Reaches $240 Million, Can Keling Propel Kuaishou to New Heights?

[6] Kuaishou’s AI Tool Betting on the Future, Yet to Be Widely Adopted by Chinese Users

[7] Kuaishou’s Strong Start to the Year: What Imagination Space Does Keling AI Bring to Kuaishou?

[8] Keling AI Membership Pricing System