Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Kuaishou Technology Q4 and Full Year 2024 Financial Results Conference call. Please note that English simultaneous interpretation will be provided for the management's prepared remarks. This English line will be in listen only mode. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Matthew Zhao, VP of Capital Markets and Investor Relations at Kuaishou Technology.
Thank you, Operator. Good evening and good morning to everyone. Welcome to our Q4 and Full Year 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. Joining us today are Mr. Cheng Yixiao, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO, and Mr. Jin Bing, Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, please note that today's discussion may contain forward looking statements which involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results and outcomes may differ from those discussed.
The Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward looking information except as required by law. For all important information about this call, including forward looking statements, please refer to the Company's public information or the Q4 and full year 2024 results announcement ended the December 31st, 2024 issued earlier today. During today's call, management will also discuss certain Non- IFRS financial measures. These are provided for additional information and should not replace IFRS based financial results. For a definition of Non- IFRS financial measures and reconciliation of IFRS to Non- IFRS financial results and the related risk factors, please refer to our Q4 and full year 2024 results announcement. For today's call, management will use Chinese as the main language. A third party interpreter will provide a simultaneous English interpretation in the prepared remarks session and a consecutive interpretation during the Q & A session.
Please note that English interpretation is for convenience purposes only. In the case of any discrepancy, management statements in the original language will prevail. Lastly, unless otherwise stated, all currency units mentioned are in RMB. Now I'll turn the call over to Yixiao.
Hello everyone. Welcome to Kuaishou's Q4 and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Over the past year, guided by our technology-driven, user-centric business philosophy, we leveraged AI technology and empowered content and business ecosystem. This created greater value for both our users and partners and drove our robust financial performance. In Q4, our average DAUs remained above RMB 400 million and our total revenue grew by 8.7% year- over- year to RMB 35.4 billion.
Our adjusted net profit reached a new quarterly high in Q4 of RMB 4.7 billion. For the 2024 full year, our total revenue increased by 11.8% year- over- year to RMB 126.9 billion and our adjusted net profit increased by 72.5% year- over- year to RMB 17.7 billion with an adjusted net margin of 14%. These gains reflect our steady improvement in profitability. Today, it has become increasingly evident that with ongoing advancements and breakthroughs in large models and application capabilities, AI is pushing the boundaries of video content creation, user experience, and the broader business ecosystem. As a leading short video platform and content community in China and globally, Kuaishou stands at the forefront of this critical intersection of AI technology and large video models where we are driving transformative changes across the industry landscape. We firmly believe that AI is much more than an efficiency improvement tool.
It is the core engine that will create greater value for our business ecosystem while continuing to drive the platform's traffic growth. Finally, our work proactively engages in and advances broader industries. Profound transition. Next, I'd like to share some of our thoughts on our go forward AI strategy. As the predominant content of consumption for global users, shorter videos have been deeply embedded in the fabric of users' daily lives. In every industry, users have developed an increasingly strong demand for richer and more diverse top notch content. With the advent of large video models, we can greatly lower the entry barrier to video creation, particularly the cost barriers. Users can now generate premium videos with a simple prompt or picture. This positions us to unlock the massive creative potential of non professional creators.
We believe Kling AI is becoming the new infrastructure for video creation in the AI era. Right now it is a powerful resource for PGC and PUGC creators that helps them create high quality videos and images efficiently. Next, Kling AI will evolve into a visual storytelling tool for amateur creators with cinema grade video generation capabilities. It empowers people to craft compelling visual stories and become a Gen AI based director, forming an AIGC driven community for content consumption and interaction while creating large scale applications in commercial scenarios. Moving forward by empowering through Kling, we hope to transform and upgrade existing business while creating a new track for AI driven video content production. By doing so, we will strengthen and elevate our position as a leading platform for short video production and consumption community. We unveiled Kling, a large video generation model last June.
After its launch, it quickly gained significant traction with video creators and artists globally, attracting more than 1 million applicants in just one month. Encouraged by users' positive response, the Kling Team swiftly improved the model, releasing new iterations approximately every two weeks. By the end of Q4 last year, we rolled out Kling AI 1.6. This latest version features enhanced responsiveness to text descriptions such as motion, temporal actions, and camera movements. It also significantly improved the visual quality, enhancing style consistency, color accuracy, lighting, dynamics, and rendering detail, keeping us in the lead in terms of global technological advantages. Kling AI 1.5 Pro is currently one of the top two large video models in the world according to the well-known AI evaluation website Artificial Analysis , ranking alongside Google Veo, far ahead of other domestic video generation large models.
In Q4 of 2024, we officially launched the standalone Kling AI app, giving global users multiple ways to access it including through both the app and the web. With the continuous improvements in Kling AI's functionality, its user base has grown at an accelerated pace while Kling AI's commercialization has also gained momentum thanks to access channels such as membership subscriptions for individual users and API interface solutions for merchants. As of February since Kling AI's monetization, we reached an important milestone of more than RMB 100 million in cumulative revenue from Kling AI. We expect Kling AI will achieve another leap in revenue in 2025. For the next stage, we'll continue optimizing and iterating Kling AI's technological capabilities through dedicated research and development efforts and steadfast investments in resources to ensure Kling large model maintain its industry leading position.
As Kling AI continues to advance, we firmly believe AI technology and its applications are creating value for our partners on the platform, especially for our marketing clients and e-commerce merchants. As such, we will upgrade our AI algorithms and underlying recommendation technologies by closely following and learning to apply the technological progress of DeepSeek and other global foundation models. This will continually amplify the matching efficiency between users, content, merchandise and improve conversion, leading to a higher ROI for our marketing clients. We'll also gradually upgrade our Magnet Engine into a next-generation AI-powered intelligent commercial engine. Through large multimodal model, we generated more creative and user-friendly marketing material content for our marketing clients, dramatically reducing their content production costs and freeing up more of their budget to focus on brand promotion and traffic conversion.
Meanwhile, AI-generated virtual digital human live streaming solution will lower the marketing entry barrier and help clients reach breakthroughs in sales. In Q4, both average daily spending on AIGC short video marketing materials and virtual digital human live streaming solutions exceeded RMB 30 million with a daily peak of RMB 60 million. Moreover, we have 45-hour model estimation capabilities by using large models to analyze product semantics and user behavior as well as integrating model architectures and sequence representations. As such, we have boosted advertising performance of marketing materials, driving more marketing spending. AI recommendation technology also offers us an opportunity to redefine the content-based e-commerce paradigm with our deep understanding of exceptional content and superior products. We are shifting from a model where people search for products to one where products intuitively understand and find the right people for consumers.
We have validated the sales funnel of our AI try- on tool in the KOL live streaming room, making personalized AI shopping easier and more interactive. For small and medium sized streamers and merchants, we launched the Smart Presentation tool which makes intelligent product recommendations and generates sales pitches among other smart features, strengthening live streamers and emergency e-commerce marketing capabilities. The era of AI is happening right now. As short video platform content community, we are determined that AI is not a replacement for human creativity, innovation or creation. We see it as a tool to help more people. In these endeavors, AI will allow everyday users to break industry and cultural barriers, giving them opportunity to become globally loved artists and entrepreneurs through equal access to creative video generation productivity tools.
With our enduring commitment to inclusivity, we have always strived to create a community where everyday people can showcase their talents and share their lives. We recognize this transition requires time and patience. Over the next three plus years, we plan to increase our capital expenditures on R&D investments which may impact the speed of our margin expansion. That said, I'm convinced that the seeds we plant today will shape the entire video production and consumption industry over the next decade and firmly establish Kuaishou as the inclusive digital home in the AI era. While we set our sights on the stars and look forward to the future, we remain grounded in making steady incremental progress.
With that overview of our vision, I'd like to briefly review our key business highlights and developments in Q4 and full year 2024. First, user growth and ecosystem construction. Q4 average DAUs on the Kuaishou app reached RMB 401 million and MAUs reached RMB 736 million, increasing by 4.8% and 5% year- over- year respectively. The average daily time per DAU on the Kuaishou app was 125.6 minutes, while total user time spent rose by 5.8% year- over- year. Our refined user growth strategy led to consistent improvement in new users' engagement, interaction, and retention rates. We focus on optimizing features and improved the end-to-end viewing experience for users, increasing the resolution and ensuring smooth streaming.
We have continuously enhanced the video sharing and communication experience while introducing various innovative features in private messaging, which drove the daily average private messenger penetration rate up by nearly 5 percentage points year- over- year in Q4 among users with mutual followers. We also retrained our comment ranking strategy, resulting in year- over- year increase of over 40% in user time spent on comment features in Q4. Content is cornerstone of our dynamic community. Understanding why users open our app guides our content strategy in terms of traffic distribution. We ensure that the standout and high quality content featuring distinctive Kuaishou characters reaches the right audience through more recommendations and higher exposure, fostering deeper engagement and stronger connections.
For example, content creator Da Bing's live streaming room emerged as a welcoming space for Kuaishou users to share their stories, interact with one another, strengthening the heartfelt bonds between users and content creators in the Pan Knowledge vertical. Wanwan Shaanxi Opera Theatre Troupe offline tours and online live streaming sparked widespread user engagement and discussions. The troupe's New Year Eve performance achieved over RMB 140 million cumulative views across live streaming and short videos. This fostered a connection between regional users and creators both online and offline, and strengthened the core user stickiness while promoting China's traditional art and intent for cultural heritage. Online marketing services in Q4. Revenue from online marketing services grew by 13.3% year- over- year to RMB 20.6 billion. This marked the first time the segment's quarterly revenue exceeded RMB 20 billion. In addition, for 2024 its revenue grew by over 20% year- over- year.
Our quarterly revenue growth was mainly driven by a year- over- year ECPM increase in the high single digits. We captured incremental opportunities such as commercialized order placement in the online marketing services and enhanced our marketing service recommendation models through AI. This improved our ability to predict accurate outcomes and increase the conversion efficiency of marketing materials. Additionally, smart marketing solutions such as UAX placement solutions and Omni- platform marketing solutions significantly enhance our marketing clients advertising performance in Q4. External marketing services continue to be the primary driver of our online marketing services in particularly the content consumption industry which included short plays, mini games and novels experience faster growth. Notably, marketing spend from commercialized short plays surged more than threefold year- over- year in Q4. On the product front, we upgraded the UAX placement solutions transitioning from rule based to model based decision making.
As a result, UAX-based marketing spending accounted for over 55% of total external marketing spending in Q4. Closed loop marketing services continue to support merchants in leveraging high quality traffic on Kuaishou and boosted operating efficiency in Q4. Total e-commerce marketing spending by merchants using our Omni platform marketing solutions and smart hosting products contributed approximately 55% of total closed loop marketing spending. By focusing on enhancing small and medium sized merchants' willingness for marketing placement on our platform and improving advertising performance, we drove a year-over-year increase of about 30% in these merchants' marketing expense. Third, our e-commerce business, leveraging our advantages in content-based scenarios and pan-shelf-based e-commerce, our e-commerce GMV grew by 14.4% year-over-year to RMB 462.1 billion in Q4.
The more abundant e-commerce offerings and enhanced synergy efficiency of our omni-platform traffic have enabled us to better meet the needs of our e-commerce users. In Q4, the number of e-commerce monthly active paying users increased by 10% year- over- year to RMB 143 million with an MAU penetration rate of 19.5%. We also launched targeted programs to acquire new users from Southern China and enhance their activity while harnessing key promotional events, refining coupon and subsidy strategies. During the Double 11 sales promotion we gained over 7 million net new users, further fortifying users' loyalty for repeat purchases.
Going forward, we'll continue to uphold our user-centric strategy and partner with merchants and KOLs to optimize the consumer shopping experience. On the merchant side in Q4, merchants continued to thrive in Kuaishou's e-commerce ecosystem, the number of average monthly active merchants increasing by over 25% year- over- year. GMV from small and medium-sized merchants largely grew year- over- year in Q4, mainly driven by our three core policies, namely improving policies for new merchant recruitment, optimizing policies for existing merchants, and leveraging diversified scenarios to encourage new merchants to use Kuaishou. We launched the Golden Bounty Initiative and Set Sail Initiative and provided cold start traffic through targeted scenarios. These programs helped early-stage merchants increase traffic, reduce operating costs, and align incentives to their key growth cycles and transition points.
We worked with ecosystem partners to accelerate new merchants growth, providing small and medium sized merchants with refining methodologies for content based e-commerce and establishing growth paths for merchants in omni- domain scenarios including KOL live streaming and distribution through the video and shopping mall. In our KOL business, we strengthened the platform's merchandise management capabilities through our Blockbuster initiative and broadened the KOLs product offerings during sales promotions. Meanwhile, we further energized our quantum based scenarios through diverse activities marketing tools including KOL competition to motivate streamers. During the Double 11 sales promotion, more than 39 million users joined Group Buy for KOL followers and over 2,500 live streaming rooms achieving GMV exceeding RMB 1 million in terms of diversified scenarios. In Q4 short video e-commerce GMV grew by over 50% year- over- year as important components to our content based scenarios.
Both short video e-commerce and interaction between short videos and live streaming has been incremental in helping merchants and Kuaishou expand their business. Additionally, pan- shelf-based e-commerce GMV contributed 30% of our total e-commerce GMV in Q4. Its growth consistently outperformed overall GMV growth, mainly driven by strong supply and demand. In Q4, average daily active merchants grew by over 50% and average daily paying users in our shopping mall grew by nearly 40% year- over- year. As our pan- shelf e-commerce increasingly complements our content-based scenarios, we have enhanced merchants' omni-domain operation efficiency by strengthening the platform's control over blockbuster products. Next, regarding our live streaming business, Q4 revenue from our live streaming business was RMB 9.8 billion. The year- over- year decline continued to narrow compared to the previous quarter.
We are determined about building a healthy and sustainable live streaming ecosystem for the long term and achieving diversified growth propelled by high quality content. By the end of Q4, number of our partner talent agencies grew by over 30%, number of talent agency managed streamers increased by over 60% both on a year- over- year basis. On the supply side, leading categories continue to create value such as multi host, live streaming, group live streaming and Grand Stage. In addition, by expanding user engagement on Grand Stage in rural towns, we accelerated our ability to discover and support local small and medium sized streamers. In terms of gaming live streaming in Q4, we explored comprehensive collaborations with key games including Game for Peace, Crossfire in areas such as streamer growth, content co-creation and event promotion while deepening our exchange expertise in fighting games and other niche verticals.
In addition, as our live streaming plus services empower traditional industries in Q4, the average daily number of users submitting resumes on Kwai Hire increased by over 100% year- over- year. Number of matches grew by over 270% year- over- year. For Ideal Housing, daily lead generation surged by over 260% compared with the same period last year. Finally, our overseas business and local services progress. Regarding our overseas business in Q4, we are deeply rooted in Brazil where we continue investing in local content operations and brand marketing. We achieved breakthroughs in innovative user acquisition channels, increasing DAUs by 9.3% year- over- year in Brazil. Benefiting from optimized traffic distribution mechanism and cooperation with the top tier local IP resources, we have gradually built a rich diversified content ecosystem with steadily growing user activity. The average daily time spent per day year- over- year and quarter over quarter exceeding 75 minutes.
Thanks to these improvements, our total overseas revenue maintained rapid growth of 52.9% year- over- year in Q4. Notably, online marketing revenue increased by 83.5% year- over- year. Meanwhile, as a result of our effective control over costs and expenses, the operating loss from our overseas business narrowed by 57.2% year-over- year. In addition, we have initially validated our e-commerce business model in Brazil, achieving consistent growth in order volume with improved subsidy and operational efficiencies. These early successes have unlocked the potential for healthy, sustainable development in the Brazilian market. Now our GMV for local services more than doubled year- over- year in Q4. We focus on city clusters with strong user bases and consistently focus on our user needs by further optimizing price consumption capability and comparison capabilities in our applications.
These efforts enhanced our compelling value for money consumption experience, driving a 52.4% year- over- year increase in average monthly paying users in Q4. We also worked on improving content quality and optimizing the user experience, which steadily increased the conversion efficiency. Monetization also improved with revenue from local services growing by 2.6x year- over- year in Q4. As we further optimize the infrastructure of our commercialization products, we also strengthened our partnerships with more high quality local operation and leader based merchants by leveraging our differentiated traffic resources, empowering merchants to achieve incremental growth.
At the same time, in pursuing higher ROI for our healthy and sustainable growth in local services, we amplified a subsidy and operational efficiencies and continue narrowing our ROI and operating loss year-over-year in Q4. Looking back over the past year, despite the numerous challenges, we achieved sustainable growth alongside our ecosystem partners by relying on the strength of our robust and thriving content ecosystem, ever improving structure and expanding commercial scenarios.
As this new era of AI technology unfolds, we remain committed to advancing our AI strategy and remain dedicated to our technology driven user centric business philosophy, staying deeply tuned to users' needs, continually expanding our content offerings and fostering our AI content and business ecosystem, built upon a trust based community to create long term value for our partners and shareholders. My prepared remarks end here. Now I'll hand the call over to Mr. Jin Bing to introduce the company's financial update for the full year 2024 and Q4 last year.
Thank you Yixiao and hello everyone. Looking back to the past year, we achieved new breakthroughs in our operating metrics and steady improvements in our financial performance. Despite uncertainties in the external environment, we maintain a strong momentum by leveraging our robust content and healthy and sustainable business ecosystem and consistently enhancing the synergy efficiency of our omni platform traffic. In the second half of 2024 our average DAU surpassed RMB 100 million, marking a significant milestone in our user ecosystem. As an AI-driven tech company, we proactively explored and deepened application of large AI models in various business areas, further elevating our content and business system while driving greater operating efficiency. For 2024 our total revenue reached RMB 126.9 billion, increasing 11.8% year- over- year.
Our adjusted net profit jumped by 72.5% year- over- year to RMB 17.7 billion with an adjusted net margin of 14%, reflecting rapid improvement in profitability. Now let's take a closer look at our Q4 financial performance. In Q4, our total revenue grew by 8.7% year- over- year to RMB 35.4 billion, mainly driven by growth in our online marketing services and e-commerce business. In Q4, online marketing services revenue increased by 13.3% to RMB 20.6 billion from RMB 18.2 billion in Q4 last year and accounted for 58.3% of total revenue. The quarterly revenue surpassed RMB 20 billion for the first time, contributing to our full year online marketing services revenue growth of over 20% year- over- year. This growth was mainly driven by our continuous enhancements to algorithms and models as well as our smart placement products.
We've upgraded our content and user understanding using AI technology, further improving recommendations and conversion efficiency which promoted more marketing spending. Revenue from other services including e-commerce reached RMB 4.9 billion in Q4, up 14.1% from RMB 4.3 billion in the same period last year. This increase was mainly driven by the growth in e-commerce GMV which boosted e-commerce commission income. We further advanced our omni-domain operations to expand merchants and KOLs business by leveraging our rich content ecosystem and continuously improving the synergy efficiency of our omni-domain traffic. Meanwhile, we further provided abundant the product offering with more diverse marketing activities to constantly elevate a user shopping experience, fortifying our e-commerce user loyalty for repeat purchase. All these measures lead to increases in the number of e-commerce monthly active paying users and monthly active markets.
Q4 our live streaming revenue was RMB 9.8 billion, a decrease of 2% from RMB 10 billion in Q4 last year. With the year-over-year decline continued to narrow sequentially. We continue to foster a healthy and sustainable live streaming ecosystem by consistently developing diverse leading categories in live streaming, deepening our expertise in niche verticals, accelerating the ability to discover and support local, small and medium-sized streamers. We effectively increased the number of streamers and talent agencies and their engagement levels. Cost of revenues went up by 6.5% year in Q4 to RMB 16.3 billion and accounted for 46% of total revenue. This increase was mainly due to increased revenue sharing costs and related tax in line with our revenue growth, depreciation of property and equipment and right-of-use assets, and amortization of intangible assets.
In Q4, gross profit grew by 10.6% year- over- year to RMB 19.1 billion. Gross profit margin was 54%, an increase of 8.9 percentage points year- over- year. Moving to expenses, selling and marketing expenses increased by 11% to RMB 11.3 billion, accounting for 32% of total revenue. The increase was mainly due to increased spending on online marketing services and e-commerce business promotions. R&D expenses were RMB 3.5 billion, rising by 4.7% year- over- year, accounting for 9.8% of total revenue, dropping from 10%-10.1% in Q4 last year. Administrative expenses increased by 15.2% year- over- year to RMB 866 million. As a percent of total revenue, administrative expenses were flat with the same period last year. The increase in R&D and administrative expenses was mainly due to higher employee benefit expenses including related share-based compensation expenses.
Group level net profit for Q4 rose by 10% year- over- year to RMB 4 billion. Group level adjusted net profit rose 7.8% year- over- year to RMB 4.7 billion, reaching a new quarterly high with an adjusted net margin of 13.3% year- over- year. Our balance sheet remains robust with cash and cash equivalents, time deposits, restricted cash and wealth management products totaling RMB 92.8 billion as of December 31st, 2024. Through enhanced monetization capabilities and efficient working capital management, we generated positive operating cash flow of RMB 8.6 billion in Q4. Additionally, we actively implemented our shareholder return program throughout 2024. Within year 2024 we had repurchased an aggregate of approximately HKD 5.46 billion in shares or around 123 million shares, which accounted for about our total shares outstanding at the beginning of 2024. Next, I'll provide a quick overview of our financial performance for 2024.
For the full year 2024, our Group's total revenue reached RMB 126.9 billion, up 11.8% year- over- year. This includes online marketing services revenue of RMB 72.4 billion, which rose 20.1% year- over- year. Revenue from our live streaming business decreased by 5.1% year- over- year to RMB 37.1 billion, which is better than we expected at the start of the year. Revenue from other services including our e-commerce business totaled RMB 17.4 billion, an increase of 23.4% year- over- year. Gross profit margin expanded by 4 percentage points year- over- year to 54.6% in 2024. Our adjusted net profit for the full year was RMB 17.7 billion, increasing by a remarkable 72.5% year- over- year with an adjusted margin of 14%.
Looking at how we continue to adhere to our technology-driven, user-centric business philosophy, under this approach, we prioritize the user needs and actively promote the development of a thriving content business system. At the same time, we will continue to invest decisively by reinforcing the critical role of AI technology to maintain our competitive edge in the ever-changing market. These efforts will unearth future growth potentials and drive the long-term sustainable development for our business and financial performance. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, now please open the call for questions.
[Foreign Language].
As a reminder to ask question, please press star one and wait for a name to be announced. Dawn, you are live. The first question comes from the line of Felix Liu from UBS. Please go ahead.
[Foreign language]
Thank you management for taking my question. My question is on your AI progress. We noticed that the company's large video model Kling has attracted widespread attention. It was even mentioned at the press conference of the NPC and CPPCC in earlier March. Could management please share the reason for Kling's success and your plans to maintain the model's leading edge? Thank you.
[Foreign Language]
Thank you for your question. First of all, I'd like to thank you all for your interest and support for Kling AI. Kling AI started out as an internally incubated project early last year. It opened for testing on June 6 last year and quickly iterated more than 20 versions since its launch. On December 19th, 2024, we officially roll out the Kling AI 1.6 model. This significantly improves semantic adherence, visual aesthetics and motion quality while supporting both standard and high quality modes. In terms of semantic adherence, Kling AI 1.6 model has enhanced responsiveness to text descriptions with better motion, temporal actions and camera movements as well as better understanding of first frame content and can generate elements not included in it. This model also boosts better visual aesthetics with a stronger style consistency, more appealing colors, better lighting dynamics and more vivid details.
The Kling AI 1.6 model has improved motion quality, featuring smooth motion that makes expressions more natural. In particular, in our internal evaluation, the overall performance of the Kling AI 1.6 model improved image to video capabilities by almost 200% from the Kling AI 1.5 model. This gives us confidence that Kling AI's comprehensive image to video performance is currently number one in the world.
Sorry for me,
[Foreign language] the reason
why Kling AI has been able to achieve and maintain its global leadership is closely tied to our sharply focused strategy for researching and developing large multimodal models. In particular, we quickly established Kling AI's industry advantages through organizational collaboration, investment in computing power, algorithm improvement and data accumulation. In organizational collaboration, we have always ascribed great value to our technical teams.
We have a deep talent pool for developing algorithms and video understanding with a high level of collaboration across our teams. In terms of computing power, we put more computing resources on developing larger video models to achieve key breakthroughs. On the algorithm front, the high complexity of lead generation model selection requires more precise technical judgment, semantic selection, and a large amount of algorithm innovations. We have been at the forefront of algorithm innovation, solidifying our ability for further technological breakthroughs. Lastly, in data accumulation, we built a strong technical moat in video data processing and synthetic data technology.
[Foreign language]
As for how we maintain our leading edge with our models going forward, we will continue to use our focused strategy and provide even more support to Kling AI.
We'll also continue to make R&D investments in Kling AI's large video model technology and leverage the Kling AI brand to attract top talent. By strengthening and integrating our efforts across areas in computing power, algorithms and data, we're confident we can sustain our global technological leadership in video generation models. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question please, Operator.
[Foreign Language] The next question comes from Lincoln Kong from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
[Foreign Language]
Thank you, Benjamin, for taking my question. My question is also about AI. I think management mentioned in the prepared remarks the company's longer term AI strategy. Could the management break this strategy down in terms of action plan and milestone targets over the next few years? Thank you.
[ Foreign Language]
Thank you for the question. We kicked off our new AI strategy at the beginning of 2023 and made clear traffic goal strategic goals to ensure we can maintain our leadership amid potential AI breakthroughs. As AI technology develops and gradually matures, we believe the market is bound to see volatility with up and down cycles. For Kuaishou, the best option is to use AI to upgrade our existing business and rapidly form a positive cycle between R& D investments and returns.
This will be key to ensuring our AI products can truly equip to transcend market cycles. At the same time, we are focused on building a strong system that drives ongoing innovation in our large model team to make more innovative breakthroughs and keep our leading edge in large model technology in the long term. With Kling AI, we aim to transform and upgrade our existing business while pioneering a new frontier in AI generated video quantity production. This will help us strengthen and grow our platform's leadership position for short video production and consumption community.
[ Foreign Language]
With this long term strategy in mind, we think there are a few key areas where we need to continue making progress. First, we'll continue to refine our large language models and large multimodal models' underlying technological capabilities, staying in sync with industry development and driving continuous innovations in algorithm in large language model R&D. We shifted our focus in Q3 of last year to the KwaiYii LLM MoE model which has smaller parameters. MoE model helped us maintain our model's overall performance and better suited to our existing business scenarios while significantly reduced training and inference costs. This year, since DeepSeek- R1 large model open sourced, we are even more confident that we can closely track and learn from the most advanced foundation models in the market to consistently improve the performance of our foundation models.
[Foreign language]
Second, we'll continuously upgrade the AI monetization model represented by Kling to drive rapid revenue growth with the goal of making Kling AI the world's top grossing video generation AI application.
Whether it's a tool for professional creators to produce high quality images and videos or a video storytelling tool for amateur creators, we believe Kling AI's powerful technology and product capability can significantly lower the entry barrier for content creators in driving the production, consumption and interaction of AIGC content. At the same time, we are integrating AI across Kuaishou's content and business ecosystem. For instance, by improving content understanding and recommendations, we can expand our user base and increase engagement. We will also make AI capabilities more widely available to advertisers and e-commerce merchants on our platform, providing them with expert tools in various areas including AI-generated video marketing material, digital human live streaming, AI try-ons, and smart presentation. These innovations will help our business ecosystem partners operate more efficiently and unlock new growth for us in the online marketing services and e-commerce business.
[ Foreign Language]
Ultimately, as we advance our AI models, the cost and complexity of content creation will drastically decrease, leading to a surge of AIGC-generated content in volume and quality. This could potentially lead to new business models opening up new sustainable growth channels for our company. Thank you.
Thank you. Operator, next question please.
The next question is coming from the line of Brian Gong from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
I will translate myself. Thanks Management for taking my question. My question is regarding Kling AI's commercialization. Could management please share with us the recent progress in Kling AI's commercialization and as a commercialization target for 2025? Thank you.
[ Foreign Language]
Yeah, thank you for your question. Since launching Kling AI, we have focused on two key areas: maintaining our industry leadership through continuous technology and product iterations, and exploring monetization tools that will turn our R&D investments into revenue. Right now, Kling AI generates revenue through user subscriptions, API interface solutions for businesses, and customized scenario solutions, providing exclusive functionality and services for users in both domestic and international markets.
[Foreign language]
Since we began monetizing Kling AI in Q4 last year, its monthly revenue has grown at a rapid pace substantially. From the beginning of its commercialization till February 2025, Kling AI's cumulative revenue has exceeded RMB 100 million. To our understanding, Kling AI is now China's number one video generation AI application by revenue, and revenue coming from international users is growing rapidly with a strong retention rate in our global paying subscriber base.
This further underscores Kling AI's global leadership in AI innovation where it's become a go-to video creation tool for AI content creators and artists worldwide. Beyond our growing user subscription, our services for our business are also quickly scaling. We have partnered with thousands of domestic and overseas enterprises including Xiaomi, BlueFocus, AWS China, Freepik, showcasing Kling AI's exceptional ability to empower video creation infrastructures across various industries.
[Foreign language]
We believe that as Kling AI continues to evolve with stronger technology and more advanced features, it will serve an even wider range of individual users and businesses across more scenarios. Working closely with creators and business clients, we will identify key demands, explore more high-value scenario applications, and build a comprehensive ecosystem that connects AI to app adoption, content production, and monetization while keeping our ROI in check.
Our next steps will be to scale up marketing and brand activities both at home and abroad, expanding AI's reach and influence among broader demographics. We're confident that Kling AI will have significant revenue growth in the year of 2025.
Thank you. Next question please. Operator.
[Foreign language]The next question comes from Daniel Chen from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
[ Foreign Language]
Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. My question is also related to AI. In your speech you mentioned that the company is harnessing advanced AI technology to empower its content and also business ecosystem. Could you please elaborate on the progress of the specific application and also your plans for them? Thank you.
[ Foreign Language]
Thank you for the question. As I mentioned earlier, harnessing AI to empower our existing business and align with our R&D investment and returns will ensure our core products can transcend market cycles. Since we first launched our new AI strategy, we have made steady progress and consistently hit key milestones one after another. Along the way and by continuously enhancing the comprehensive performance of our foundation models, we have fortified AI's role in empowering our content and business ecosystem.
[ Foreign Language]
In content understanding and recommendations, we use large AI models to analyze short videos, live streaming comments, and user interests. The result is more accurate user recommendations that have increased user activity and time spent on our platform large models. Higher level reasoning allows for more advanced content analysis, smarter recommendations, and better matching capabilities, effectively replacing the need for extensive manual labeling. Instead, our models automatically learn from videos, live streaming comments and commercial content as well as user preferences for search scenarios. We started internal testing in early March, integrating DeepSeek R1's large model capabilities to improve intelligent search accuracy and user experience. This has helped to drive higher user activity while tapping into monetization opportunities in our search scenario.
[Foreign language]
In commercial applications, we expect AI models to keep improving on analyzing product semantics and user behavior by refining model architecture and sequence representations.
Over time, we can improve model estimation capabilities which will enhance app performance and ultimately driving growth in marketing spend. For example, we expect our AI powered tools will reduce most of our marketing clients' short video production costs by 60-70% or more. Additionally, as AI digital human technology matures, we are creating new opportunities for merchants with digital human live streaming rooms helping them achieve standout content based e-commerce. In 2025, we expect AI marketing products such as AIGC short video marketing materials and virtual digital human live streaming solutions to continue to add incremental value growth to our online marketing services revenue.
Thank you. Last question please. Operator.
[Foreign language]Last question comes from the line of Yuan Liao from CITIC Securities. Please go ahead.
[ Foreign Language]
Thanks management for taking my questions. So my question is about could management share your AI investment plan and scale and also the impact on your profit? Thank you.
[Foreign language]
Thank you for your question. As Yixiao mentioned earlier, our AI strategy is crucial to the company's future development. We've already seen the tremendous value it brings to our content and business ecosystem. With the Kling AI's monetization accelerating, we're even more confident about making a firm and long term commitment to investments in AI.
[Foreign language]
In terms of AI related CapEx, we plan to increase our 2025 spend in AI compared with 2024, but in a measured way. First, we already pre-purchased and stored some training computing power in 2023 and 2024 and will continue purchasing computing power in 2025.
Our main goal is to ensure that Kling AI has the training computing power needed to keep its leading edge. Second, we are making structural adjustments to our AI related CapEx. As Kling AI's commercialization grows, we will adjust and increase investment in inference computing. The computing power required for inference computing is sufficiently supplied in the market. That is why while we plan to add more inference GPUs, the overall CapEx increase will be controlled. Finally, we will keep improving the utilization efficiency of our existing computing power and servers through engineering innovation and operational optimization, making sure we get the most value from our existing infrastructure.
[ Foreign language]
AI related expenses like R&D personnel costs, we expect a moderate year- over- year increase as we look to attract, retain and develop our talented AI team. Overall, we estimate that AI investments will impact our adjusted net margin by about 1-1.2% this year. Of course, we will dramatically adjust the scale of AI investments based on business progress. For example, if Kling AI's monetization keeps accelerating, we might increase investment in inference computing power. That said, since Kling AI has already reached break even in terms of the gross profit margin in inference generated videos, additional spending on inference will have a relatively small impact on our bottom line in the long term as AI continues to empower our content and business ecosystem. We expect this to meaningfully drive higher revenue efficiency and profitability for the company over time, t hank you.
Thank you, that is the end of Q&A session. Back to you, operator.