Kuaishou publicly announced the specific commercialization achievements of Keling AI for the first time.

Text by | Lan Jie

Edited by | Qiao Qian

On March 25th, Kuaishou released its financial report for Q4 and the full - year of 2024. Among them, AI was almost the most frequently mentioned term in the report and the most concerning issue for investors at the earnings conference.

The beginning of the business review in the financial report states, "Under the business concept of 'Technology at the core, users first', we empower the content and business ecosystem with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology." In addition, at the earnings conference, Cheng Yixiao, the founder and CEO of Kuaishou, said that for Kuaishou, the best choice is to upgrade the existing business with the support of AI, quickly form a positive cycle of R & D investment and revenue, and enable Kuaishou AI to truly have the ability to withstand market cycles.

This is, of course, because Kuaishou AI has made good progress in R & D and commercialization implementation. In this financial report, the specific commercialization results of Keling AI were announced for the first time. As of February 2025, the cumulative revenue of Keling AI exceeded 100 million RMB.

It is also because AI determines the upper limit of Kuaishou's development and even the transformation of its own positioning. On the day after the release of the financial report, Kuaishou's stock price after earnings dropped by more than 3% at one point. In fact, Kuaishou achieved decent results, but the uncontrollable decline of its stock price has been a problem for the past few quarters. There are many factors that determine the rise and fall of the stock price. For Kuaishou, a non - negligible reason is the market's judgment on its positioning. Is Kuaishou an e - commerce stock in a market approaching the ceiling with limited competitiveness, or a technology stock at the forefront of the trend? To some extent, AI determines this positioning.

Specifically, there are mainly two uses of AI for Kuaishou. One is to empower the existing business, and the other is to serve as a new traffic entry.

In Q4 of 2024, the average daily active users and average monthly active users of the Kuaishou App reached 401 million and 736 million respectively, with year - on - year growth of 4.8% and 5.0% respectively. Against the backdrop of the stagnant growth of the Internet user scale, the continuous growth of Kuaishou's active users is already a good achievement. Among them, AI has played an important role. The financial report shows that Kuaishou uses large models to understand short - videos, live - broadcasts, comments, and user interests, and recommends more accurate content to users, effectively increasing user time and activity.

In addition, AI is also playing a role in Kuaishou's core online marketing services and its growth engine, the e - commerce business. The Universal Auto X (UAX, a fully automated advertising solution) launched by Kuaishou is an important driving force for the double - digit year - on - year growth of its online marketing service revenue in Q4 and the whole year. In Q4 and the whole year of 2024, Kuaishou's online marketing service revenue was 20.6 billion yuan and 72.4 billion yuan respectively, with year - on - year growth of 13.3% and 20.1% respectively. This is mainly due to the optimized intelligent marketing solutions and the application of AI technology, which promoted the advertising spending of marketing customers.

In Q4, external - loop marketing services were the main driving factor for the growth of Kuaishou's online marketing service revenue. The proportion of UAX's advertising spending in the total external - loop spending increased to over 55%, a 5% increase from the previous quarter.

More intuitively, in the commercialization scenario, in Q4 of 2024, the average daily spending on Kuaishou's AIGC marketing materials exceeded 30 million RMB, a 50% increase compared with the 20 million in the previous quarter. If calculated based on 92 days in the fourth quarter, the total spending on AIGC marketing materials in Q4 last year was about 2.76 billion yuan, accounting for 13.4% of the online marketing revenue.

In addition to empowering the existing business, the large - scale video - generation model Keling in Kuaishou's AI business is frequently mentioned.

In March this year, at the press conference answering questions about the government work report, Chen Changsheng, the deputy director of the Research Office of the State Council, said that China's artificial intelligence industry has achieved "accelerated development" this year, which is reflected in the global popularity of DeepSeek, the performance of Unitree robots at the Spring Festival Gala, and the fact that Keling's international evaluation has exceeded that of Sora. Keling has become on par with the other two "rising stars".

In Q4 of 2024, Keling launched version 1.6 with improved performance. In addition, Kuaishou officially launched the independent Keling AI App last quarter, which has become a new traffic entry for Kuaishou.

As Cheng Yixiao said at the earnings conference, in the future, through the empowerment of Keling AI, while transforming and upgrading the existing business, a new track for AI - generated video content will be created to further enhance Kuaishou's leading position as a short - video production and consumption platform.

Meanwhile, as Kuaishou's growth engine, the growth rate of the e - commerce business has been continuously slowing down. In Q4 of 2024, the GMV of Kuaishou's e - commerce was 462.1 billion yuan, with a year - on - year growth of 14.4%. This result is lower than the 15.1% growth rate in the third quarter of last year and much lower than the growth rate of over 20% or even 30% in 2023 and before. This makes Kuaishou's need to bet on AI more urgent.

However, judging from the current feedback in the secondary market, Kuaishou has not been able to reverse the market's impression of its positioning through the progress of AI. In addition, although Kuaishou has established certain differentiated advantages in the video - generation field, given the fierce domestic AI competition, its future is still uncertain.

Taking R & D expenditure as an example, Kuaishou's R & D expenditure in 2024 was 12.2 billion yuan, basically the same as in 2023. In contrast, according to the research report of Zheshang Securities, ByteDance's capital expenditure in the AI field reached 80 billion yuan in 2024.