Tencent-backed (0700) Kuaishou Technology (1024) said on Friday that its unit Beijing Kling has completed a fundraising round of about 19.8 billion yuan (US$2.98 billion).
The short-video platform operator will hold two-thirds of the equity and 52.45 percent of voting rights in the Kling AI maker through its Lucky Labs holding vehicle.
- The fundraise comes after a US$2.8 billion raise in July, which drew investors like Alibaba (9988) and Tencent, when Kling was valued at US$15 billion pre-money
- Kuaishou did not reveal how Kling would use the proceeds
- Among new investors in the latest round: A unit of Hong Kong-listed Kingdee International (0268) invested 300 million yuan, Gongqingcheng Junke put in 200 million yuan and a unit of Shanghai-listed MetaX added 100 million yuan
- They partially took over other investors' commitments and received redemption rights
- Kling competes with AI video generation models of OpenAI, Google and TikTok owner ByteDance
- Kling is planning for an IPO next year, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month citing people familiar with the matter
Reuters
