When text-to-video first arrived, the Western assumption was that the winners would be the labs with the best research reputations. What actually happened is that the winner, by revenue, was a product built inside a Chinese short-video company.
Kling, made by Kuaishou, reported in June 2026 that its global user base had passed 100 million, up about 67% from 60 million at the end of 2025, spanning 224 countries and regions. Enterprise customers approached 50,000, up from 30,000 over the same period.
The revenue line is what turns this from a user statistic into a business. Kling's first-quarter 2026 revenue exceeded 650 million yuan, up more than 300% year on year, with an annualised run-rate of roughly US$500 million in March 2026. Kuaishou's Q2 2026 results, disclosed on 19 August, put the quarter above 850 million yuan, up more than 200%.
Key takeaways
- Users: 100 million globally as of June 2026, across 224 countries and regions; 60 million at end-2025.
- Enterprise: nearly 50,000 business customers and developers, up from 30,000.
- Revenue: over 850 million yuan in Q2 2026 (+200% YoY); 650 million yuan in Q1 2026 (+300% YoY); annualised run-rate near US$500 million in March 2026.
- Product: Kling 3.0 series launched February 2026 with native all-modality input and output; native 4K output added April 2026.
- Capital: Kuaishou confirmed in May 2026 it was evaluating a restructuring and possible external financing of Kling; a pre-IPO round was reported at an US$18 billion pre-money valuation.
- Analyst view: Goldman Sachs maintained a buy rating on Kuaishou in June 2026 and projected Kling's annualised revenue could exceed US$1 billion by end-2026.
Why a short-video company won
The standard explanation is model quality, and Kling's is genuinely competitive — analysts credit its diffusion-transformer architecture lead and multimodal visual understanding. But quality alone does not produce 100 million users.
What Kuaishou had was a distribution and feedback machine that no research lab possesses: hundreds of millions of daily users generating a continuous stream of real creative briefs; an advertising business that measures whether generated video actually converts; and an existing payments and enterprise-sales organisation.
That last part is underrated. Most AI video tools sell to individuals. Kling's nearly 50,000 enterprise customers are in advertising, film and animation, and game production — industries where a tool is judged on whether it fits a production pipeline, not on whether a demo looks impressive.
What it is being used for
The use cases that generate revenue are unglamorous and specific:
- Advertising creative. Kuaishou reported that by March 2026, AIGC-generated short-video marketing material accounted for 10% of spend across its short-video marketing marketplace — generated at lower cost and higher throughput than human production.
- Film and television. Native 4K output, launched April 2026, targets professional workflows where resolution previously forced expensive post-production.
- Platform content. Kling's generation capability feeds Kuaishou's own live-streaming gift production; users sent 1.1 million customisable AI effect gifts in Q1 2026.
None of this is "AI replaces Hollywood." It is AI absorbing the enormous volume of ordinary commercial video that was previously too expensive to make at all.
The part that should worry competitors
In Q1 2026, Kling topped App Store charts in 42 markets, including Brazil and Germany. Those are not markets where a Chinese product wins on domestic distribution. They are markets where it won on price, quality and word of mouth.
It is also worth noting the competition is domestic, not foreign. ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 is reported to hold the larger share of China's video-model market, and the two are pushing each other on multi-shot coherence and audio synchronisation. Chinese generative video is not one product — it is a market with real internal rivalry, which is usually what produces durable global leaders.
User, customer and revenue figures as disclosed by Kuaishou in 2026 financial reporting and company announcements; valuation per media reports on the pre-IPO round.