computer science

Kuaishou

Kuaishou is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kuaishou rather than just read about it. In short: Kuaishou Technology is a Chinese publicly traded partly state-owned holding company based in Haidian District, Beijing, that was founded in 2011 by Hua Su (Chinese: 宿华) and Cheng Yixiao (Chinese: 程一笑). The company, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, is known for developing a mobile app for sharing users' short videos, a social network, and video special effects editor.

Key takeaways

Kuaishou belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kuaishou to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kuaishou from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kuaishou Technology is a Chinese publicly traded partly state-owned holding company based in Haidian District, Beijing, that was founded in 2011 by Hua Su (Chinese: 宿华) and Cheng Yixiao (Chinese: 程一笑). The company, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, is known for developing a mobile app for sharing users' short videos, a social network, and video special effects editor. The app is known as Kwai in many countries outside of China. It is also known as Snack Video in India, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Ownership and governance Kuaishou's overseas team is led by the former CEO of the application 99, and staff from Google, Facebook, Netflix, and TikTok were recruited to lead the company's international expansion. The China Internet Investment Fund, a state-owned enterprise controlled by the Cyberspace Administration of China, holds a golden share ownership stake in Kuaishou.

History Kuaishou is China's first short video platform that was developed in 2011 by engineer Hua Su and Cheng Yixiao. Prior to co-founding Kuaishou, Su Hua had worked for both Google and Baidu as a software engineer. The company is headquartered in Haidian District, Beijing. Kuaishou uses a decentralised content distribution model based on an inclusive value-based algorithm. The platform has a virtual screening area for watching user-generated short videos and a public space for online socialising. Kuaishou's predecessor "GIF Kuaishou" was founded in March 2011. GIF Kuaishou was a mobile app with which users could make and share GIF pictures. In 2013, Kuaishou became a short-video social platform. By 2013, the app had reached 100 million daily users. By 2019, it had exceeded 200 million active daily users. In March 2017, Kuaishou closed a US$350 million investment round that was led by Tencent. In January 2018, Forbes estimated the company's valuation to be US$18 billion. In April 2018, Kuaishou's app was briefly banned from Chinese app stores after China Central Television (CCTV) reported on the platform popularizing videos of teenage mothers. In 2019, the company announced a partnership with the People's Daily, an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, to help it experiment with the use of artificial intelligence in news. In June 2020, following the start of the 2020–2021 China–India skirmishes, the Government of India banned Kwai along with 58 other apps, citing "data and privacy issues". In January 2021, Kuaishou announced it was planning an initial public offering (IPO) to raise approximately US$5 billion. Kuaishou's stock completed its first day of trading at $300 Hong Kong dollars (HKD) (US$38.70), more than doubling its initial offer price, and causing its market value to rise to over $1 trillion HKD (US$159 billion). In February 2021, Kuaishou made a debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with its shares soaring by 194% at the opening. The company subsequently encountered major setbacks as a result of heightened regulatory restrictions on Chinese internet firms, which contributed to its share price falling by nearly 80% from its post-IPO peak. By December 2021, Kuaishou announced a major reorganization, including the layoff of 30% of its staff, primarily targeting mid-level employees earning an annual salary of $157,000 or more. This restructuring aimed to cut costs and mitigate financial losses. In October 2022, state-owned Beijing Radio and Television Station took a minority ownership stake in Kuaishou. In April 2024, a Financial Times article citing current and former Kuaishou employees stated that the company has been running an ageist redundancy programme known internally as "Limestone", culling workers in their mid-30s. In June 2024, Kuaishou and the Sichuan international communication center launched a branch center in São Paulo, Brazil. In June 2024, Kuaishou released its diffusion transformer text-to-video model, Kling, which they claimed could generate two minutes of video at 30 frames per second and in 1080p resolution. The model has been compared to that of OpenAI's Sora text-to-video model. It is accessible to the public on Kuaishou's video editing app KwaiCut via signing up for a waitlist with a Chinese phone number. In December 2025, Kuaishou came under a cyberattack which led to a temporary influx of violent and pornographic content.

Popularity As of 2019, it had a worldwide user base of over 200 million, leading the "Most Downloaded" lists of the Google Play and Apple App Store in eight countries, such as Brazil, where it was introduced in 2019. Its main short-video platform competitor was Douyin, which is known as TikTok outside China. As of 2021, Kuaishou had a monthly average of 777 million active users, 25% of whom created content. According to the platform, more than 240 million users earn income via the app (for example, through virtual gifts or live-streaming e-commerce) as of 2021. As of 2022, users spend an average of 128.1 minutes per day on the app. Compared to Douyin, Kuaishou is more popular with older users living outside China's Tier 1 cities. Its initial popularity came from videos of Chinese rural life. The app is particularly well known for its "rustic" aesthetic and is popular among rural people. Kuaishou also relied more on e-commerce revenue than on advertising revenue compared to its main competitor.

Reception Kwai (as the app is called outside of China) was banned in India in 2020 along with other short video apps like TikTok. Kuaishou then released the clone SnackVideo, which was subsequently also banned. The app is one of the most popular social media platforms in Brazil, where Kuaishou partnered with creators to make telenovela style content, and appeals to football fans by working with football teams CR Flamengo and Santos FC and sponsoring the tournament Copa América. Kwai was notable in Brazil for spreading information (and misinformation) about the COVID-19 vaccine and political misinformation.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kuaishou

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kuaishou claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kuaishou before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kuaishou ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kuaishou

In research: Kuaishou appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kuaishou in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kuaishou is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2021 initial public offerings, Android (operating system) software, Chinese companies established in 2011, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kuaishou outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Kuaishou in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kuaishou means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kuaishou out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kuaishou in simple terms?

Why does Kuaishou matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kuaishou?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kuaishou.