Commercially available infrared (IR) nonlinear optical (NLO) materials, such as diamond-like AgGaQ 2 (Q = S, Se), display large NLO coefficients but relatively low laserinduced damage thresholds (LIDTs), which seriously hinder their widespread laser applications. Herein, the "one-formultiple substitution" strategy, namely, [SZn 4 6+ + 5Zn 2+ ⇒ A + + 5Ga 3+ ] (A = K, Rb and Cs), is applied on the diamond-like zinc-blende ZnS, and affords three new polar ternary crystals AGa 5 S 8 (A = K, Rb and Cs) through the solid-state method. These compounds inherit the diamond-like anionic backbone framework in ZnS where the NLO functional motifs GaS 4 are arranged in a parallel manner. This characteristic accounts for the remarkable phase-matchable second-harmonic generation intensities (1.1-1.2 × AgGaS 2 ). In addition, the inclusion of the highly electropositive A + cations affords a band gap ranging from 3.10 to 3.37 eV, which facilitates the improvement of LIDT (9.3-12.4 × AgGaS 2 ). To the best our knowledge, crystals AGa 5 S 8 (A = K, Rb and Cs) are the first series of ternary A-inclusion chalcogenides with large second-harmonic generation responses (≥1.0 × AgGaS 2 ) and wide band gaps (≥3.0 eV), fulfilling the rigorous requirements of outstanding IR NLO materials. In addition, the "one-for-multiple substitution" strategy presents the great significance of diamondlike structure evolution and provides a remarkable opportunity to achieve NLO materials.