Kling AI Nears $3B Round at $18B Valuation Ahead of HK IPO

The number that jumps out of the Kling AI round is not the headline dollar figure. It is that roughly 75% of the company's revenue already comes from outside China, and a US firm, General Atlantic, is leading its first external financing at the same time Beijing has reportedly been telling leading Chinese AI firms to refuse US capital without prior clearance. That combination is what makes this more than another late-stage AI raise.

According to a South China Morning Post report citing sources familiar with the matter, Kuaishou's Kling AI unit is closing an external funding round of up to $3 billion at a post-money valuation of about $18 billion, with Tencent participating. Bloomberg has been tracking the General Atlantic-led shape of the deal through the summer. The $18 billion mark is trimmed from an initial $20 billion target set in April 2026, which is a useful reminder that even the hottest AI video story is negotiating with the market rather than dictating to it.

The business underneath is not a projection. Kling has reached an annualized revenue run rate of about $500 million, with first-quarter revenue reportedly exceeding CNY 650 million (roughly $95.8 million), and three-quarters of that money coming from creators and businesses outside China. Kuaishou expects to initiate the Hong Kong listing process for Kling within the next 12 months, with proceeds earmarked for computing infrastructure, data-center construction, and talent, which is the same shopping list every serious AI video shop now has.

The honest caveat is that "nearing" is not "closed", the geopolitical wrapper on US money flowing into Chinese AI is genuinely unsettled, and the reporting does not tell you how much of the up-to-$3 billion is firm commitment versus soft, or whether the deal has already cleared Chinese regulatory review. What the reporting also does not give you is the margin or churn picture behind that $500 million run-rate. The forward-looking piece worth watching is straightforward. If Kling gets a Hong Kong listing away on this trajectory in the next twelve months, the AI-video market suddenly has a Chinese public comparable that everyone else's investors, from Runway and Pika to the video ambitions inside OpenAI, will be re-marked against.