Kingsoft Cloud shot up to $74.67 a share after its IPO, then lost more than 95 percent of that in two years. It went public in May 2020, the first big U.S. IPO from China after the Luckin Coffee scandal shook trust in Chinese listings. Kingsoft Cloud rented servers, storage, and networks to companies in China. It had a powerful friend in Xiaomi, the phone maker, which was an early investor and a major customer.

Kingsoft's Cloud Arm

Kingsoft, the Beijing software company, formed Kingsoft Cloud in 2012 as its cloud services arm. Xiaomi put in about $1.8 million that same year for a 9.9 percent stake. The bet was that China's fast-growing apps would rather rent computing than build their own. Yuri Milner put in $20 million in 2013, and IDG joined a later round. By the IPO, Kingsoft owned about 53 percent and Xiaomi about 16 percent.

Listed Twice, Down Hard

Kingsoft Cloud priced at $17 a share and began trading on the Nasdaq on May 8, 2020. It raised $510 million and closed its first day at $23.84. The shares then slid with the rest of Chinese tech. In December 2022 the company added a second listing in Hong Kong under the code 3896. Revenue grew 23 percent in 2025, to 9.56 billion yuan. It is still listed in New York and Hong Kong.

Cover: Landscape after Wang Meng, Qi Zhijia. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for mountains in the mist (a Chinese cloud).