Keling AI earned an additional 100 million yuan in the second quarter, and its revenue in 2025 is expected to double the initial target.

Author | Ranger

In the second quarter of this year, Kuaishou's Keling AI still performed admirably, generating revenues exceeding 250 million yuan. In contrast, its revenues in the first quarter of this year were 150 million yuan. After one quarter, Keling AI earned an additional 100 million yuan.

This part of the revenues is mainly contributed by professional users.

At the earnings conference, Kuaishou CEO Cheng Yixiao stated that currently, the main users of Keling AI are professional creators such as content creators interested in AIGC, general self - media users, designers and artists, practitioners in the e - commerce advertising industry, and film and television production workers. Among them, professional creators are the main users of Keling AI.

The development path of Keling AI is clear: to become a professional large - scale model targeting the B - end market. As Cheng Yixiao said, in the future, with the improvement of the model's comprehensive performance, Keling AI is expected to gradually acquire in - depth application capabilities in industrial - level scenarios such as game development and professional film and television production.

Short dramas serve as the most suitable springboard for this expectation and an important driving force on Keling AI's commercialization journey.

Recently, the AI unit short drama "New World Loading" co - produced by Kuaishou's Keling AI and Xingmang Short Dramas has concluded. Kuaishou aims to showcase Keling AI's current capabilities to the industry and beyond through this short drama.

Compared with Kuaishou's first short drama "The Wonders of Mountains and Seas: Cutting Through Waves", "New World Loading" has shown significant improvements in the consistency of characters and scenes and the fineness of close - up shots. Although the presentation of this short drama still cannot match that of traditional film and television productions, it cannot be denied that the progress is astonishing.

The production team of "New World Loading", Yilei, once told 36Kr that one of the reasons for such a presentation is that Kuaishou focuses on building the basic model, which means there is more room and potential for its video - generation capabilities.

At the end of July this year, Keling AI also launched a new feature, Lingdong Canvas, which enables real - time multi - person collaboration, intelligent assisted creation, and an infinite visual space, thereby further attracting B - end users.

Both short dramas and AI are current hot topics. AI short dramas, as a new phenomenon, are growing into another highly potential new thing. This is the imaginative aspect of Keling AI - what kind of effects will occur when AI penetrates the multi - billion - yuan short drama market?

However, competition still exists. In conversations between 36Kr and AI short drama practitioners, few teams use only one large - scale model. This is because the creation process of AI short dramas requires leveraging the strengths of different video - generation large - scale models.

In this regard, if Keling AI wants to capture a larger share of the B - end market, it needs to excel in all aspects.

Keling AI represents new hope for Kuaishou after the slowdown in the growth of its core business and also affects Kuaishou's popularity in the capital market.

Therefore, in the past quarter, Kuaishou has further intensified its efforts in AI.

Among Kuaishou's various expenditures, R & D investment has increased the most, rising by 21.2% year - on - year to 3.4 billion yuan, mainly due to investment in AI. In contrast, the year - on - year growth rates of sales and marketing expenses and administrative expenses were 4.6% and 13.3% respectively.

In mid - August, Kuaishou announced that Senior Vice President, Head of Keling AI Division and Head of Community Science Line, Gai Kun, would also serve as the Head of Keling AI Technology Department and continue to report to Kuaishou Technology founder and CEO Cheng Yixiao.

Gai Kun understands algorithms and is the soul figure of the Keling AI team. Therefore, this adjustment is regarded as another verification of the strategic position of Keling AI for Kuaishou.

Along with the increasing investment, investors are also concerned about its impact on the group's overall profit margin.

In response, Kuaishou CFO Jin Bing stated at the earnings conference that Keling's full - year revenues in 2025 are expected to double compared to the target set at the beginning of this year.

"Before that, based on business development needs, the company increased its investment in inference computing power for Keling AI in the middle of the year. It is expected that the investment in Capex related to Keling AI in 2025 will also double compared to the initial budget. Since Keling AI has achieved positive gross margin at the inference computing power level, and while Kuaishou maintains product iteration and upgrading, the gross margin of Keling AI at the inference level remains relatively stable. Therefore, the additional investment in inference computing power still has a controllable impact on the group's profit, with the impact remaining within 1 - 2 percentage points." Jin Bing said.