Kuaishou's Kling AI unit completes a near $3 billion funding round

Oct 30 : Tencent-backed Kuaishou Technology said on Friday that its unit Beijing Kling has completed a fundraising round of about 19.8 billion yuan ($2.98 billion).

The short-video platform operator will hold two-thirds of the equity and 52.45 per cent of voting rights in the Kling AI maker through its Lucky Labs holding vehicle.

• The fundraise comes after a $2.8 billion raise in July, which drew investors like Alibaba and Tencent, when Kling was valued at $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 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

($1 = 6.66 Chinese yuan renminbi)