General Atlantic weighs lead role in Kling AI funding round

Kuaishou Technology is in talks with General Atlantic to lead the first external financing for Kling AI, its video generation unit, as the Chinese company prepares the business for a planned initial public offering. Kling AI is seeking to raise more than $2 billion at a post-investment valuation of $18 billion, after earlier investor discussions around a $20 billion target valuation were reduced to better align with market demand.

The talks remain preliminary, and other Asia-focused investment firms have shown early interest. Kuaishou’s shares gained as much as 8.9% in Hong Kong trading on Wednesday, supported by the funding discussions and a broader rise in Chinese AI stocks.

A deal would give Kling a major American investor despite heightened US-China technology tensions. General Atlantic previously backed ByteDance Ltd., Meta Platforms Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc., while China’s government in April ordered Meta to unwind its $2 billion takeover of Chinese-founded agentic AI platform Manus over technology-transfer concerns.

Kling competes with ByteDance’s Seedance and startups including Shengshu in AI video generation and is pursuing global monetization after OpenAI shuttered Sora. Kuaishou has said it is evaluating a restructuring proposal for external funding, and the service is expected to be carved out before a 2027 initial public offering. Kling’s annual recurring revenue rose to approximately $500 million in March from $300 million in January, driven by Kling 3.0.