Physix Frontier
Kuaishou
Funding History
- IPOUSD 5.4B — Issue Price: HK$115.00; Market Cap at Listing: Approx. HK$1.39 trillion based on opening price on first day; Shares Issued: Not fully disclosed (fundraising scale $5.4B); Lock-up Period: Standard 180-day lock-up period | Source: Prospectus/Exchange disclosures
- Pre-IPOUSD 2.5B — Amount: USD 2.45B ($2,450,000,000); Led by: Sunny Festive | A Pre-IPO round completed ten days before the IPO, introducing sovereign funds (ADIA) and multiple international institutions to provide anchoring for IPO pricing. | Source: EqualOcean Data
- Series G RoundUSD 3B — Amount: USD 3B; $3,000,000,000; Post-money valuation: Approx. USD 28.6B (nearly USD 30B at time of prospectus filing); Led by Tencent | Last large-scale financing round before IPO, led by Tencent for USD 3B. Subsequently, completed Pre-IPO round of USD 2.45B on 2021-01-26 (Sunny Festive, MSAL, ADIA, etc.). By the time Kuaishou filed its prospectus on 2020-11-05, it had completed ten rounds of financing with a valuation near USD 30B. | Source: EqualOcean Data
- Series F RoundUSD 1B — Amount: USD 1B; USD 1,000,000,000; Led by: Sequoia China + Tencent | In August 2019, Kuaishou and Baidu jointly invested approx. USD 450M in Zhihu Series F; In April 2020, followed by investing USD 300M in Minglue Tech Series E and injecting USD 30M into Spark Education. Before listing, Kuaishou began building content and data ecosystem through investments. | Source: EqualOcean Data
- Series E RoundUSD 400M — Amount: USD 400M; $400,000,000; Led by Tencent | Tencent increased its stake for the second time within six months. 2018 was a critical year for Kuaishou's commercialization: E-commerce business began developing, and full acquisition of AcFun was completed in June. Prior to this, in Jan 2018, Tencent and Sequoia had invested USD 1B at a post-money valuation of USD 18B. | Source: Sogou Baike / YiOu Data
- Series D RoundUSD 0M — Amount: $350M (some sources say $300M); approx. $350 million; Led by: Tencent | Tencent led Kuaishou's round for the first time, subsequently becoming its most important strategic shareholder and adding capital in multiple consecutive rounds. As of March 2017, Kuaishou had 400M total users and 50M DAU; by November 2017, total users exceeded 700M and DAU exceeded 100M, entering the '100M+ DAU club', generating over 10M new video contents daily. In January 2018, Tencent and Sequoia invested another $1B, resulting in a post-money valuation of $18B. | Source: 360 Baike / Sogou Baike
- Series C RoundUSD 250M — Amount: Approx. RMB 250M (also reported as tens of millions of USD); Undisclosed; Post-money valuation: Approx. USD 2B; Led by: Baidu | The strategic implication of Baidu leading this round is strong: 2016 was a critical year for Baidu focusing on information feeds and content distribution, and investing in Kuaishou was its positioning in the short-video track. In 2016, Kuaishou launched live streaming features, becoming a natural extension of platform revenue; in the final quarter of 2017, calculated by virtual tipping income, Kuaishou's main site became the world's largest single live streaming platform. | Source: 360 Baike / EqualOcean Data
- Series B RoundUSD 10M — Amount: USD 10M; $10,000,000; Led by Sequoia China. In Jan 2015, Kuaishou received tens of millions of USD in Series B from Sequoia and Morningside (some sources record this as the current round). From Jun 2015 to Feb 2016, Kuaishou's user base grew from 100M to 300M—this explosive growth was supported by servers and bandwidth funded by this round. | Source: EqualOcean Data
- Series A RoundUndisclosed — Amount: Several million USD; Undisclosed; Led by Morningside Capital | Key timing: In 2013, Su Hua joined Kuaishou with his entire team, with Cheng Yixiao serving as Chief Product Officer and Su Hua as CEO (responsible for machine algorithms and external affairs). In July 2013, Kuaishou transitioned from a tool to a short video community and officially changed its name. This pivot marked the watershed moment where Kuaishou transformed from a 'tool' into a 'community'. | Source: Baidu Baike / EqualOcean Data
- Angel RoundUSD 0M — Amount: USD 300K ($300,000); Led by: Morningside Capital | Kuaishou originated as 'GIF Kuaishou', a GIF creation tool founded by Cheng Yixiao in March 2011, primarily distributed via Weibo and Renren. This USD 300K investment from Morningside Capital was Kuaishou's first institutional funding and also Morningside's earliest bet in the short video sector (Morningside was also one of Xiaomi's earliest investors). | Source: YiOu Data