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Kling AI's revenue went from $100 million to $500 million ARR in a year
Kuaishou's video unit closed a funding round reported between $2.8 and $3 billion at a $15-18 billion valuation. It is the clearest sign yet that AI video has a real business behind the demos.
Most of what gets published about AI video economics is either a vendor's own press release or a third party guessing at per-second pricing. Kuaishou's Kling AI is a rarer case: a run of financial reporting, over more than a year, that lets you actually track a revenue curve.
The trajectory, as reported
Kling reportedly reached $100 million in annualised revenue (ARR) around March 2025, roughly ten months after launch. From there, reporting puts ARR at about $300 million by January 2026 and around $500 million by March 2026, a five-fold increase in about a year. For the second quarter of 2026 specifically, Kling's revenue was reported at roughly RMB 850 million (approximately $118-120 million), with year-on-year growth cited above 200%. Cumulative first-half 2026 revenue was reported around RMB 1.5 billion, or roughly $223 million.
Alongside that, and while Runway has recently chosen to resell access to Kling rather than compete with it directly, Kuaishou's video AI unit is reported to have closed a funding round. Figures across outlets range from $2.8 to $3 billion, at a valuation reported variously as $15 billion or $18 billion depending on the source. We are not resolving that discrepancy here; different reports appear to be using different rounds, dates or currency conversions, and we would rather flag the spread than quote one figure as settled fact.
Why this is a genuinely different story from the rest of the sector
Nearly every other number that circulates about AI video (per-second generation cost, leaderboard scores, "best-in-class" quality claims) is either self-reported by a vendor or measured inconsistently by a third party. That is the entire reason a site like this one exists.
Revenue reported to, or implied by, a public parent company's earnings is a different category of claim. Kuaishou is publicly listed, and Kling's numbers are being reported alongside the parent group's own quarterly revenue (RMB 35.5 billion for Q2 2026, up 1.4% year-on-year), not asserted in isolation by the AI unit itself.
That does not make every figure above precise (currency conversions and reporting windows differ across sources), but it puts Kling in a different category from most of the "market leader" claims we cover on our platforms page: a business with a visible, growing, externally-reported revenue line, not just a leaderboard score.
Sources: Dealroom, BigGo Finance, Digital Applied.
Related: Kling 3.0
Priya Shenoy: Tracks what AI video actually costs across the platforms that resell access to the same handful of models. Treats a pricing page as a claim, not a fact, until someone checks it.