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Author | Huang Yu
On March 25th, merely two years after its debut, Sora, which once ignited a global frenzy in AI video generation, announced its withdrawal from the stage of history.
OpenAI's abandonment of Sora reflects the arduous challenges in the video generation field, where even top global AI players find it difficult to sustain such a money-burning project.
When video generation can no longer be mere showmanship but must truly evolve into a tool that can be integrated into workflows, listed companies themed around video generation must also present a more &#34;granular&#34; roadmap for commercialization.
On March 25th, Kuaishou Technology (01024.HK) released its 2025 fourth-quarter and full-year results. Its total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 increased by 11.8% year-on-year to 39.6 billion yuan, with adjusted net profit increasing by 16% to 5.5 billion yuan. Full-year total revenue increased by 12.5% year-on-year to 142.8 billion yuan, and adjusted net profit reached 20.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.5%, with the adjusted net profit margin improving to 14.5%.
This year, Kuaishou maintained a steady improvement in profit margins while continuing to increase its AI investments.
In terms of the highly anticipated AI commercialization, Kuaishou's AI video generation platform, Keling AI, generated 340 million yuan in revenue in the fourth quarter, slightly below institutional expectations at the beginning of the year.
It is known that according to previous reports, Keling AI's monthly revenue had already exceeded 20 million USD in December last year. Therefore, at the beginning of this year, institutional expectations were consequently raised for Keling AI's fourth-quarter revenue forecast from the guided 300 million to a range of 350-400 million.
For the full year of 2025, Keling AI's total revenue reached 1.04 billion yuan, equivalent to approximately 150 million USD.
Cheng Yixiao, Founder and CEO of Kuaishou Technology, revealed that as of January this year, Keling AI's annualized revenue run rate (ARR) had exceeded 300 million USD.
Cheng Yixiao stated that based on the current growth momentum and commercialization progress, the company is highly confident that Keling AI will achieve more than double year-on-year revenue growth in 2026. &#34;As model capabilities continue to improve, product forms are constantly refined, and adaptability to professional scenarios is enhanced, Keling AI's commercialization is expected to accelerate further.&#34;
This means Kuaishou's AI strategy has officially moved beyond the &#34;storytelling&#34; phase and entered a period of more significant commercial monetization.
If Kuaishou is locked in a close fight with competitors like Douyin in the advertising and e-commerce sectors within the existing market, then in the AI field, Kuaishou is attempting to establish its own moat through the first-mover advantage in technology monetization.
It is understood that since the fourth quarter of 2025, Keling AI has successively launched the unified multimodal video model Keling O1, the Keling 2.6 model with &#34;simultaneous audio and video output&#34; capability, and the Keling 3.0 series models built on the All-in-One concept.
Kuaishou's management stated that improvements in model quality and innovation in product features are continuously driving its commercialization capabilities.
Currently, major manufacturers are trending towards accelerating the iteration of video generation models. ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 model, launched before the 2026 Spring Festival, once garnered global attention.
Regarding the impact of increasingly fierce industry competition on Kuaishou, Cheng Yixiao stated that video generation is far from mature in terms of technology and product at present. The accelerated updates of the Seedance 2.0 model and other large models have had a positive impact on the industry, reducing the creation threshold for ordinary users while increasing the penetration of AI video generation in more application scenarios, thus making the industry cake larger.
&#34;The technical route of the Seedance 2.0 model supporting multimodal input is consistent with the Keling O1 model, which also confirms the foresight of Kuaishou's model iteration around multimodality.&#34;
Cheng Yixiao believes that Keling's model and product capabilities remain at the global leading position. In the leaderboards for video generation large models, Keling's benchmark test scores rank at the top across the board. In terms of character consistency, controllability, physical realism, and stability in complex scenes, Keling 3.0 performs even better, further strengthening Keling AI's differentiated advantage for professional creators and enterprise clients.
Goldman Sachs pointed out in a recent report that Keling 3.0 remains competitive in its cinematic-level detail and pricing advantages, and continues to rank among the world's top models in third-party benchmark tests.
Despite the current intense market competition, Goldman Sachs also believes that the AI video generation field is not a &#34;winner-take-all&#34; zero-sum game. Kuaishou's Keling, along with top models like ByteDance's Jimeng 2.0, will benefit from the rapidly expanding market, and the advancement of AI technology will reshape the value distribution of the entire entertainment industry.
Goldman Sachs estimates that the global AI video generation market size will grow tenfold in the next five years, reaching approximately 29 billion USD by 2030, which is sufficient to accommodate multiple top players coexisting.
Of course, to maintain competitiveness in the video generation field, Kuaishou must continue to increase its investment.
Kuaishou CFO Jin Bing stated that the group's overall Capex investment is expected to reach approximately 26 billion yuan in 2026. The additional 11 billion yuan investment compared to 2025 will mainly be used for computing power support for the Keling large model and other foundational large models, as well as conventional server procurement expenses such as offline data storage and processing, and investment in data/computing center construction.
AI is becoming Kuaishou's core growth engine. In addition to direct subscription revenue from Keling AI, AI also significantly enhances efficiency across Kuaishou's various business scenarios.
Kuaishou's management pointed out that Kuaishou continues to deepen the empowerment of AI large model technology in its content and business ecosystem, as well as the improvement of internal organizational infrastructure efficiency.
Online marketing services remain Kuaishou's largest revenue source, accounting for over half of its total revenue. In the fourth quarter last year, Kuaishou's revenue from online marketing services reached 23.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.5%.
Kuaishou indicated that in the fourth quarter, generative recommendation models and intelligent bidding models brought approximately a 5% incremental increase to its domestic online marketing service revenue. Meanwhile, the total consumption amount for online marketing services driven by AIGC marketing materials reached 4 billion yuan, a further increase from over 3 billion yuan in the previous quarter.

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Keling AI's monetization enters the fast lane

- Sora, a key player in AI video generation, announced its exit from the market, highlighting challenges in the industry even for leading companies like OpenAI.  
- Kuaishou Technology reported revenue growth of 11.8% in Q4 2025, driven by AI investments and consistent profitability, while its AI video platform, Keling AI, generated revenue of 3.4 billion RMB in Q4.  
- As competition intensifies, Kuaishou aims to leverage its technology for growth, with expectations for Keling AI to double its revenue in 2026 amid projected market expansion to $29 billion by 2030.

Wallstreetcn

KUAISHOU-W

Yinhua MSCI China A ETF

Harvest Hang Seng SCHK Technology ETF

ChinaAMC Hang Seng Internet Technology Industry ETF(QDII)

Guotai MSCI China A ESG General ETF

Hwabao CSI HK Equities Internet ETF

CSOP HS TECH

Facing the Seedance2.0 Challenge? Kuaishou's Keling Aims to Double Revenue Within the Year