Kuaishou: how a GIF-making app became a short-video, e-commerce and AI platform
Kuaishou did not begin as the short-video, livestreaming, e-commerce and artificial-intelligence company it is today.
Its origins were much narrower.
In 2011, software engineer Cheng Yixiao launched GIF Kuaishou, a mobile application that allowed users to create and share animated images.
That starting point matters because Kuaishou’s early history is sometimes incorrectly presented as though Cheng Yixiao and Su Hua launched the original application together.
They did not.
Kuaishou’s own corporate records state that Cheng launched GIF Kuaishou in 2011. Su Hua joined the group later, in November 2013, after working at companies including Google China and Baidu.
The two men subsequently became Kuaishou’s co-founders and together developed the short-video business that transformed the original GIF application into one of China’s largest content and social platforms.
That distinction does not reduce Su Hua’s importance to Kuaishou.
It makes the company’s actual history more interesting.
Cheng created the original product. Su joined as the company was moving into short video and introduced recommendation-algorithm technology. Their complementary roles helped turn a relatively simple media-creation application into a platform used by hundreds of millions of people.
By 2026, Kuaishou had expanded far beyond its early GIF roots. Its businesses included short video, livestreaming, online advertising, e-commerce, local services, gaming and generative artificial intelligence.
Cheng Yixiao launched GIF Kuaishou in 2011
Before starting Kuaishou, Cheng Yixiao worked as a software engineer and developer at Hewlett-Packard between 2007 and 2009.
He later worked at Renren from September 2009 until February 2011.
That year, Cheng launched GIF Kuaishou.
The original application was designed around creating and sharing animated images rather than operating as the fully developed social-video service associated with the Kuaishou name today.
Kuaishou’s current investor-relations material continues to identify Cheng as the person who launched the original application.
This is the clearest starting point for the company’s history.
Short-form visual content was still at a relatively early stage in 2011.
Mobile cameras, smartphones and mobile internet access were improving quickly, but the ecosystem of creators, recommendation engines, livestreamers and online merchants that would later define major Chinese content platforms had not yet developed into its modern form.
GIF Kuaishou therefore began with a much simpler proposition: let people create and share animated visual content.
The platform’s transformation came later.
Su Hua joined in November 2013
Su Hua joined the Kuaishou group in November 2013.
Before joining, he had worked as an engineer at Google China from December 2006 to October 2008 and at Baidu from January 2010 until May 2011.
When Su joined Kuaishou, he became CEO while Cheng Yixiao served as chief product officer.
According to Kuaishou, Su introduced the company’s recommendation-algorithm mechanism.
Kuaishou specifically credits Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao together with initiating the short-video business.
That wording provides an important distinction.
Cheng launched the original GIF Kuaishou application in 2011.
Su joined two years later.
They then worked together on the transformation into short video.
Recommendation technology became increasingly important as the amount of content on platforms grew.
A chronological feed works when there is relatively little content and users already know whom they want to follow.
A recommendation system can instead analyse activity and interests to decide which content to place in front of individual users.
For a video platform, that changes the product dramatically.
Users no longer need to search manually for every creator or piece of content. The platform can continuously recommend videos based on signals within its system.
This approach became central not only to Kuaishou but to the broader short-video industry.
Kuaishou became much more than a video feed
As Kuaishou’s user base expanded, the company added services around its content community.
Livestreaming became a major part of the platform.
Online marketing allowed businesses to pay for exposure to users.
E-commerce added transactions between merchants, creators and consumers.
Kuaishou also expanded into areas including gaming and local services.
The result was an ecosystem where content, commerce and advertising increasingly interacted rather than operating as completely separate businesses.
A creator could publish short videos, livestream to followers and participate in product sales.
Merchants could reach potential customers through content and advertising.
Users could move from entertainment into shopping without leaving the broader platform ecosystem.
By the time Kuaishou prepared to become a public company, it identified livestreaming, online marketing and other services including e-commerce and games as major parts of its business.
Kuaishou listed in Hong Kong in February 2021
Kuaishou reached another major milestone on 5 February 2021, when Kuaishou Technology listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The company’s global offering was priced at HK$115 per Class B share.
Kuaishou initially offered 365,218,600 Class B shares, subject to the over-allotment arrangement.
The company estimated net proceeds of approximately HK$41.276 billion before the exercise of the over-allotment option and after relevant fees and estimated expenses.
Kuaishou said it intended to use the proceeds to strengthen its ecosystem, invest in research and technology and pursue selected acquisitions or investments complementary to its business.
The listing turned Kuaishou into a publicly scrutinised technology company.
Quarterly and annual reports subsequently provided much greater visibility into the scale of its users, advertising business, livestreaming revenue, e-commerce activity and profitability.
It also highlighted how dramatically the company had evolved from the GIF-making app Cheng had launched a decade earlier.
Cheng Yixiao became CEO in 2021
Management roles also changed during Kuaishou’s first year as a listed company.
On 29 October 2021, Su Hua stepped down as chief executive.
Cheng Yixiao became CEO.
Su remained chairman of the board and an executive director, focusing more heavily on long-term strategy and new initiatives.
At that point, Kuaishou explicitly described Cheng as responsible for the company’s day-to-day operations and business development.
The change also formalised the different roles the two co-founders had developed over time.
Su had played a major role in strategy and organisational management.
Cheng had remained closely associated with product development and businesses including e-commerce and games.
Another leadership change followed two years later.
Cheng Yixiao became chairman of the board with effect from 29 October 2023, while continuing to serve as CEO.
As of September 2026, Cheng remains Kuaishou’s co-founder, chairman and chief executive.
Su Hua remains a co-founder and executive director.
Advertising became Kuaishou’s largest revenue source
The modern Kuaishou business generates revenue from several areas.
Online marketing services have become the largest contributor.
Livestreaming remains significant.
Other services include businesses such as e-commerce.
Kuaishou does not simply record the full value of products sold through its e-commerce ecosystem as revenue. It separately reports gross merchandise value, or GMV, as a measure of transactions taking place through the platform.
For the full 2025 financial year, Kuaishou reported RMB142.8 billion in total revenue, up 12.5% from RMB126.9 billion in 2024.
Online marketing services contributed 57.1% of 2025 revenue.
Livestreaming contributed 27.4%.
Other services accounted for the remaining 15.5%.
The company reported full-year e-commerce GMV of approximately RMB1.598 trillion.
Average daily active users on the Kuaishou app reached 410.2 million during 2025, while average monthly active users reached 724.6 million.
Those figures show the difference between the original application and the modern business.
Kuaishou is no longer primarily a tool for making media.
It operates a large commercial ecosystem built around attention, content, advertising and transactions.
Kuaishou moved aggressively into generative AI
The next major chapter began with artificial intelligence.
Kuaishou launched its self-developed Kling video-generation model in June 2024.
Kling was designed to create video from text prompts and was later expanded with image-to-video, video-extension and other creative capabilities.
Kuaishou opened Kling AI beta access to global users in July 2024.
The product developed unusually quickly.
Kuaishou continued releasing new versions and features, while also turning Kling AI into a standalone commercial product rather than using generative AI only inside the Kuaishou social platform.
By early 2026, the company had launched Kling AI 3.0.
Kuaishou reported in February 2026 that Kling AI served more than 60 million creators worldwide, had generated more than 600 million videos and worked with more than 30,000 enterprise customers.
Those are company-reported figures rather than independent measurements, but they illustrate how quickly the AI product became a significant new part of Kuaishou’s technology strategy.
AI also became financially meaningful.
Kuaishou reported that Kling AI’s annualised revenue run rate exceeded US$100 million in March 2025.
By the second quarter of 2026, the company said Kling AI generated more than RMB850 million in quarterly revenue, representing growth of more than 200% from the comparable period a year earlier.
These figures should not be interpreted as meaning AI has replaced Kuaishou’s existing businesses.
Advertising, livestreaming, e-commerce and the core Kuaishou app remain much larger parts of the overall company.
Kling is better understood as an additional business built on technology and expertise developed inside a company that has spent years working with video.
Kuaishou still has more than 400 million daily users
Kuaishou’s 2026 results show that its core social platform remains enormous.
During the second quarter of 2026, the Kuaishou app recorded an average of 412.3 million daily active users.
Average monthly active users reached 797.3 million.
Quarterly revenue was RMB35.5 billion.
For the first six months of 2026, Kuaishou reported RMB69.3 billion in revenue, up 2.4% from the corresponding period in 2025.
Average daily active users for the half year were 412.5 million, while average monthly active users reached 784.5 million.
The company also remained profitable.
Kuaishou reported RMB6.1 billion in profit for the first half of 2026 and adjusted net profit of RMB7.3 billion.
Those figures represent actual reported historical results, not forecasts about where the company might go next.
That distinction is especially important in AI, where ambitious predictions often move faster than realised financial performance.
Kuaishou’s story is really three transformations
Kuaishou’s history can be divided into three major transformations.
The first was from GIF creation to short video.
Cheng Yixiao launched the original GIF Kuaishou application in 2011. Su Hua joined in 2013, introduced recommendation technology and worked with Cheng to develop the short-video business.
The second was from content platform to commercial ecosystem.
Livestreaming, online marketing, e-commerce and other services turned audience engagement into multiple revenue streams.
The third is from video platform to AI video technology company.
Kling AI gives Kuaishou a product that can be used outside the traditional Kuaishou social feed and sold directly to creators and businesses.
These transformations are connected.
Kuaishou did not suddenly enter AI from an unrelated industry.
The company had already spent more than a decade building systems for creating, understanding, recommending, distributing and monetising video.
Generative video extends that expertise into creating the video itself.
The corrected Kuaishou timeline
2011: Cheng Yixiao launches the original GIF Kuaishou application for creating and sharing animated images.
November 2013: Su Hua joins the company and becomes CEO. Cheng serves as chief product officer. Su introduces recommendation-algorithm technology, and the two co-founders develop Kuaishou’s short-video business.
Following years: Kuaishou expands into livestreaming, online marketing, e-commerce and other digital services.
5 February 2021: Kuaishou Technology lists on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at HK$115 per Class B share.
29 October 2021: Cheng Yixiao becomes CEO. Su Hua remains chairman and executive director.
29 October 2023: Cheng Yixiao becomes chairman while remaining CEO.
June 2024: Kuaishou launches its Kling video-generation model.
2025: Kuaishou reports RMB142.8 billion in annual revenue and approximately RMB1.598 trillion in e-commerce GMV.
2026: Kling AI becomes an increasingly significant commercial product, while the core Kuaishou app continues to serve more than 400 million average daily active users.
From animated GIFs to generative video
There is a useful symmetry in Kuaishou’s history.
The company began with software that helped ordinary users create animated visual content.
Fifteen years later, one of its most closely watched new products again revolves around helping people create visual content — this time using generative artificial intelligence.
Almost everything between those two points changed.
The scale changed from a small application into a platform with hundreds of millions of active users.
The business model expanded from content sharing into livestreaming, advertising and e-commerce.
The company became publicly traded.
Its leadership roles evolved.
And its technology moved from simple animated-image creation into recommendation systems and large generative models.
But the central role of visual creation remained.
The most important correction to Kuaishou’s history is therefore also one of the simplest.
Cheng Yixiao launched GIF Kuaishou in 2011. Su Hua did not join until November 2013.
From that point onward, Su and Cheng jointly built the short-video business and the wider Kuaishou ecosystem.
Getting that sequence right gives both founders proper credit and provides a more accurate explanation of how Kuaishou actually developed.
What began as Cheng Yixiao’s GIF-making application became, after Su Hua joined and the short-video business took shape, a major content and commercial platform.
Today that same company is attempting another transition, using the video expertise accumulated since 2011 to build generative-AI products alongside its enormous existing social platform.
Sources
This article was checked against Kuaishou Technology’s official investor-relations records, board and management biographies, Hong Kong listing announcements, annual and interim financial results, management-change announcements and official Kling AI product releases.
Information checked on 18 September 2026.
