Chinese short-video company Kuaishou Technology beat estimates with 33.7 billion yuan (US$5 billion) in revenue in the first quarter, driven by the rapid commercialisation of its flagship artificial intelligence video generator, Kling AI.

Overall revenue grew 3.4 per cent, but Kling’s revenue surged more than 300 per cent to 650 million yuan in the period, the company said on Wednesday.

“AI technologies continued to provide the momentum for our content prosperity, business growth and organisational efficiency improvement,” Kuaishou said, adding that Kling had claimed the top position in the App Store across 42 markets, including Brazil and Germany.

Kuaishou, whose main business is in short video, where it competes with ByteDance’s TikTok and Douyin, has described Kling as the source of its “second growth curve”.

Kuaishou co-founder and CEO Cheng Yixiao said in an earnings call on Wednesday that Kling’s fast growth was driven by both corporate and individual users, and that the AI tool had found wide use in marketing, film, television, short drama and games.

The company reported a profit of 3.4 billion yuan for the quarter, down 26 per cent from a year earlier but beating the estimate of 3 billion yuan.

Chief financial officer Jin Bing said the company expected capital expenditure to reach 26 billion yuan for the year, adding that it had “taken proactive measures to build advanced procurement and inventory buffers amid rising computer power prices”.