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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.

By Priya Shenoy · 11 September 2026 · Updated 7 October 2026

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.

Runway's own post announcing that Kling models are available inside its product.

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.