On December 20, WPS stated on its public account that starting from December 20, 2023, the domestic personal version of WPS Office will officially close third-party commercial advertising. WPS stated in the announcement: WPS knows that every achievement achieved is inseparable from everyone's support and companionship. Kingsoft Office will adhere to the company mission of “simple creation, easy expression, and realization of value connection” to provide users with high-quality product and service experience.
Over the past few years, WPS has been preparing to shut down its third-party commercial advertising business. Advertising was once an important source of revenue for Kingsoft Office, but despite this, the company believes that providing high-quality product and service experience is more important, and its third-party commercial advertising revenue has begun to gradually shrink after 2019.
Kingsoft Office, which has reduced its third-party commercial advertising business, is more focused on technology research and development and improving user experience in terms of products and services. Data shows that from 2020 to 2022, Kingsoft Office’s R&D expenses were 711 million yuan, 1.082 billion yuan, and 1.331 billion yuan respectively, showing a rapid growth trend. In the first three quarters of 2023, Kingsoft Office invested 1.076 billion yuan in research and development, accounting for 33% of total revenue.
In April 2023, Kingsoft Office's artificial intelligence application WPSAI with large language model capabilities made its debut; in September 2023, Kingsoft Office announced the latest progress of its self-developed model; in November 2023, WPSAI launched a public beta and will be open to all users for experience. WPSAI is positioned as an application side of large language models, anchoring the development of three strategic directions: AIGC (content creation), Copilot (intelligent assistant), and Insight (knowledge insight). Currently, WPSAI can provide users with multiple capabilities such as one-click content generation, AI formula writing, and one-click generation of PPT.