Kuaishou’s Kling Picks Banks for $1 Billion-Plus Hong Kong IPO

Kling AI, a spun-off unit of Chinese video app Kuaishou Technology, has picked banks for a Hong Kong initial public offering that could raise at least $1 billion, Bloomberg reported.

Kling, which develops AI video generation models, is aiming for a listing as soon as next year. The company is working with China International Capital Corp., Goldman Sachs and UBS on the share sale, according to the report.

Kling was spun off from Hong Kong-listed Kuaishou, a major competitor to ByteDance’s Douyin video app in China. Its public listing comes as it faces a tough battle in the AI video market against Chinese and American competitors such as ByteDance, Alibaba, MiniMax, Google and xAI.

In July, Kling raised nearly $3 billion at a pre-money valuation of $15 billion. Its investors include Chinese investment firms CPE and Guofang Investment, investment bank Citic Securities and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm BlueFive, as well as Tencent, Alibaba Cloud and Baidu.