iQIYI faced a challenging 2025, with full-year revenue falling 7% year-on-year to RMB 27.29 billion and the company swinging to a net loss of RMB 206.3 million attributable to shareholders. The decline ended the platform's previous profitability cycle, pressured by intensifying competition and a peak in long-form video user scale. Despite the annual downturn, the fourth quarter signaled a recovery, with revenue rising 3% year-on-year to RMB 6.79 billion and Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) increasing by 13%.

Q4 Performance Recovery

The fourth quarter emerged as a turning point, reversing the revenue declines seen in the first three quarters. Membership revenue increased 4% quarter-on-quarter, while advertising revenue reached RMB 1.35 billion, up 9% quarter-on-quarter. This recovery was bolstered by the success of the hit drama "Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty 3," which achieved a heat score of 8,850 within five hours of launch and garnered over 750 million cumulative views. The performance helped drive brand advertising growth, with variety and drama advertising revenue rising double digits year-on-year.

2025 Business Segment Performance

Revenue declines were recorded across iQIYI's primary business units. Membership services, the core revenue generator, brought in RMB 16.81 billion, accounting for 61.6% of total revenue but falling 5% year-on-year. Online advertising services revenue dropped 9% to RMB 5.19 billion, while content distribution and other businesses decreased 8% to approximately RMB 5.29 billion. The company attributed the declines to user time fragmentation caused by short-form videos and the sustained popularity of free, AI-generated micro-dramas.

User Engagement and Strategic Outlook

Alternative data indicates shifting user engagement patterns. While Monthly Active Users (MAU) fell 9% year-on-year in Q4 2025, ARPU rose to RMB 22.07 per month. In Q1 2026, MAU dropped 13% year-on-year, yet average daily usage time per user increased to 118 minutes, up 43%. To counteract user growth ceilings, iQIYI is accelerating AI innovation through tools like "Nado Pro" and expanding its offline footprint, including the development of iQIYI Parks. The company also aims to boost overseas revenue, particularly in Southeast Asia, through localized content investments.

iQIYI, China's leading online entertainment platform, launched the psychological thriller "None Shall Escape" on June 9, demonstrating a nearly 50% improvement in overall shot production efficiency through the use of its AI platform, NadouPro. The film, released under iQIYI's Emerging Film Project initiative, centers on a medical student uncovering dark secrets in a secluded manor. The deployment of NadouPro marks a significant step in the platform's progress toward an industrialized AI workflow for feature film production.

NadouPro addresses the challenge of managing massive visual effects shots across large-scale teams by providing a centralized, scalable environment for shot tracking and scene management. Yu ZHANG, Visual Effects Director of "None Shall Escape", noted that the platform connects to various large-model tools, allowing the team to run the same prompt across models to identify the best performance for each shot type. The interface facilitated real-time organization, progress tracking, and communication, capabilities that previous AI tools lacked.

Workflow Optimization

The production team utilized NadouPro for conceptual art design, shot generation, and the enhancement of live-action footage through effects refinement and prop replacement. For a sequence depicting human cells mutating under an experimental drug, the platform compressed what would have been nearly a month of atmosphere development under a traditional workflow into under one week, saving approximately three weeks.

In another scene requiring post-war smoke and haze, the traditional approach would have demanded extensive particle simulation and compositing. Instead, the team imported live-action footage into NadouPro and used its integrated large-model tools to rapidly generate stylistic variants that replicated real on-set conditions.

Adoption and Expansion

Post-production Director Xingsheng HAN stated that integrating NadouPro into the visual effects pipeline improved overall shot production efficiency by nearly 50%. He emphasized that AI serves as a tool to free production teams from repetitive work, allowing them to focus on the creative process.

Since opening for commercial use on April 20, NadouPro has onboarded more than 10,000 active creators and supported over 100 iQIYI original productions in under one month. These milestones reflect strong early adoption as the platform continues to roll out new features and expand internationally to support professional long-form content creation.