Moonshot AI
Unicorn Β· $35BBeijing, CN Β· 7 known investors
Moonshot AI develops large language models for knowledge work and reasoning tasks. The company operates an AI assistant platform called Kimi with multimodal capabilities and extended context windows.
Also known as Beijing Moonshot AI Technology Co., Ltd. Β· Moonshot Β· Moonshot.ai Β· εδΊ¬ζδΉζι’η§ζζιε ¬εΈ Β· ζδΉζι’
Investors Β· 7
Also in the syndicate Β· 2
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements- Undisclosed amountSeries CDec 2025Source β
Source: company announcements and press reports β follow each round's link for the claim.
Valuation Β· disclosed
Disclosed eventsSource: SEC prospectus filings, and round valuations the company or its investors disclosed β follow each entry's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Moonshot AI (Chinese: ζδΉζι’, "Dark Side of the Moon"; legal name Beijing Moonshot AI Technology Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese artificial intelligence company headquartered in the JD Technology Building in Beijing's Haidian district. It develops the Kimi series of large language models and consumer and developer products built on them, and states its aim as achieving artificial general intelligence while contributing research to the global open-source community. It is described as one of China's six "AI Tigers".
The product line centres on Kimi, an AI assistant first released in October 2023 and available via web, mobile app, desktop clients for macOS and Windows, browser plug-ins and an API. Related products include Kimi Researcher, Kimi Agent, Kimi Code (a command-line coding agent), Kimi Audio and Kimina Prover. Models are exposed through both a global endpoint (api.moonshot.ai) and a China endpoint (api.moonshot.cn), and are also available through third-party developer tooling and LLM routing layers. Model families referenced publicly include the moonshot-v1 series (8k/32k/128k context variants), vision-preview models, K2 and K2-Thinking, Kimi K2.5, Kimi K2.6 and Kimi K3.
Kimi K2.5, released in January 2026, was a multimodal upgrade to K2 adding native vision through a 400-million-parameter encoder called MoonViT, capable of processing images and video for agentic tasks; it also introduced an "Agent Swarm" capability directing up to 100 sub-agents and the Kimi Code CLI agent. Kimi K3, released in July 2026, is described as a 2.8-trillion-parameter natively multimodal model with a one-million-token context window aimed at long-horizon coding, knowledge work and deep reasoning, and as the largest open-weights model released to date.
Founding story
Moonshot AI was founded in Beijing in March 2023 by Yang Zhilin, Zhou Xinyu and Wu Yuxin, who had been schoolfriends at Tsinghua University. Yang, the CEO, previously worked at Google Brain, Meta Platforms and Huawei, where he worked on Huawei PanGu. The company was launched on the 50th anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon, Yang's favourite record, which inspired the company's Chinese name. Yang has stated the goal of building foundation models to reach artificial general intelligence, framed around three milestones: long context length, a multimodal world model, and a scalable general architecture capable of continuous self-improvement without human input.
Business model
Moonshot AI monetises its models through consumer subscriptions to the Kimi assistant and through paid API access on its open platform for developers and businesses. In May 2024 Kimi offered six subscription tiers ranging from 5.2 yuan for four days to 399 yuan for a year of priority use. Model weights are released openly, but Kimi K3's custom licence requires revenue sharing of up to 30% from inference providers generating more than US$20 million annually. The company also pursues consumer distribution partnerships, such as co-branded credit cards with the Agricultural Bank of China and American Express that return Kimi memberships based on card usage.
Revenue comes from paid Kimi subscription tiers, usage-based API sales on the Moonshot open platform, and licence-based revenue sharing from large third-party inference providers serving its open-weights models. Reported annual recurring revenue was US$200 million as of April 2026 per Wikipedia's infobox, with the same article's history section citing US$300 million ARR reached in April 2026.
Traction
Reported annual recurring revenue of US$200 million (April 2026, per Wikipedia infobox) and a separately cited US$300 million ARR milestone in April 2026. Kimi K3's July 2026 release was reported to have driven a sixfold increase in daily sales, and Kimi ranked third in monthly active users among Chinese AI assistants as of August 2024. The company reported approximately 300 employees in 2026, up from 40 at the time of its initial funding. Its public status page showed all Kimi, API and model services operational with 88.97%-100% 90-day uptime across components in late August 2026.
Latest developments
Moonshot released Kimi K2.6 in April 2026 and both Kimi K3 and PerceptionBench in July 2026, with K3's open weights published on 26-27 July 2026. On 10 July 2026 Moonshot, the Agricultural Bank of China and American Express jointly announced two credit cards returning Kimi memberships based on usage. On 29-30 July 2026 the company closed a $3.5 billion round at a $35 billion valuation, with China's National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund among the lead investors, and was reported to be approaching investors for a further round at a $50 billion pre-money valuation ahead of a possible Hong Kong IPO as soon as late 2026.
βΈFull profile β market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Moonshot is positioned as one of China's leading frontier AI labs and is counted among the country's six "AI Tigers". Wikipedia states Kimi K3's performance led the Chinese AI industry and rivalled frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic, and that K2.5 served as the basis for US models including Thinking Machines Lab's Inkling and Cursor's Composer 2. As of August 2024 Kimi ranked third among Chinese AI assistants by monthly active users, and by 2024 the Financial Times described it as one of the leading domestic rivals to Baidu's Ernie Bot. Press coverage frames Moonshot and DeepSeek as the two largest Chinese frontier labs being backed by state-directed capital.
Distinguishing characteristics include very long context windows (from 200,000 Chinese characters in 2023 to a stated one-million-token window in K3), open-weights releases of frontier-scale models including a 2.8-trillion-parameter model described as the largest open-weights model to date, native multimodal image and video input, and agentic features such as multi-sub-agent swarms and a command-line coding agent. Its open-weights licence includes a revenue-sharing requirement for large inference providers, an unusual condition among open model releases. Kimi models are noted for strong support of both Chinese and English.
Technology
Moonshot builds large language models emphasising very long context windows, multimodality and agentic behaviour. Kimi K3 is described as a 2.8-trillion-parameter natively multimodal model with a one-million-token context window. Kimi K2.5 added native vision via a 400-million-parameter MoonViT encoder handling images and video, plus an Agent Swarm mechanism coordinating up to 100 sub-agents to search, generate, analyse and organise information; the K2-Thinking variant provides extended reasoning chains. Earlier moonshot-v1 models were offered in 8k, 32k and 128k context variants with vision-preview options, exposed through an OpenAI-compatible chat completions API. The API constrains temperature to a 0-1 range and does not support tool_choice="required". Model weights for the Kimi series are released openly under a custom licence. Bloomberg reported in July 2026 that Alibaba Cloud supplied Moonshot access to 20,000 Nvidia H200 GPUs, which Alibaba denied, and alleged possible access to Nvidia Blackwell GPUs via southeast Asia.
Go-to-market
Distribution combines a free-to-try consumer assistant (web, iOS/Android app, macOS and Windows desktop clients, browser plug-ins) with a self-service developer platform offering API keys and OpenAI-compatible endpoints, plus open-weights releases that drive adoption through third-party developer tools such as coding agents and model gateways. The company reports research and model releases through its own site and open-source channels; the July 2026 open-weights release of K3 was accompanied by a reported sixfold surge in daily sales. Consumer reach is also extended through co-branded credit card partnerships in China.
Consumers using the Kimi assistant on web, mobile and desktop; developers and engineering teams integrating Kimi models via API, third-party coding tools and LLM gateways for large-codebase and agentic tasks; and enterprises, with reported usage of Kimi models for engineering work at companies including DoorDash, Airbnb and Cursor.
Geography
Headquartered in Beijing (JD Technology Building, Haidian district), with worldwide reach described for its services. It operates separate global (api.moonshot.ai) and China (api.moonshot.cn) API endpoints. Reports in June 2024 of US-market product plans were denied by the company. Its open-weights models are used by developers and companies internationally, including in the United States.
History
After its March 2023 founding, Moonshot released the first version of the Kimi chatbot in October 2023, handling up to 200,000 Chinese characters per conversation; in March 2024 it claimed support for 2 million Chinese characters, and a surge in users caused a two-day outage on 21 March 2024 for which the company apologised. In June 2024 reports said Moonshot was preparing US-market products, including a role-playing chat app (Ohai) and a music video generator (Noisee), which the company denied. Kimi K2.5 followed in January 2026, Kimi K2.6 in April 2026, and Kimi K3 and PerceptionBench in July 2026. In February 2026 Anthropic accused Moonshot, along with DeepSeek and MiniMax, of using fraudulent accounts to distil its Claude models; from April 2026 the US House Committee on Homeland Security subpoenaed DoorDash, Airbnb and Cursor over their use of Kimi models. In March 2026 the company was reported to be considering a Hong Kong initial public offering, and on 30 July 2026 it closed a round at a $35 billion valuation.
Risks & controversies
In February 2026 Anthropic accused Moonshot, alongside DeepSeek and MiniMax, of violating its terms of service by using thousands of fraudulent accounts to generate millions of Claude conversations for model distillation. From April 2026 the US House Committee on Homeland Security subpoenaed DoorDash, Airbnb and Cursor over their use of Kimi models. Press reports describe a US Bureau of Industry and Security investigation into alleged acquisition of Nvidia GB300 chips via Thailand and alleged distillation of an Anthropic model, with entity-list consideration reportedly shelved but the investigation active. Bloomberg reported that Alibaba Cloud supplied 20,000 Nvidia H200 GPUs, which Alibaba denied. In April 2026 China's National Development and Reform Commission reportedly instructed Moonshot, ByteDance and StepFun to reject US-origin capital without government approval. Operationally, a March 2024 traffic-driven outage lasted two days and prompted a public apology.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources β announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed β not independently audited.
Competitors Β· 5
by search overlap
Companies competing with Moonshot AI for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline Β· 12
launches, deals, and filingsBloomberg reported that Alibaba Cloud supplied Moonshot access to 20,000 Nvidia H200 GPUs, which Alibaba denied, and alleged Moonshot could access Nvidia Blackwell GPUs via southeast Asia.
Moonshot raised $3.5 billion, exceeding an initial $1-2 billion target, at a $35 billion valuation. China's National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund was among the lead investors. The company was reported to be seeking new funds at a $50 billion pre-money valuation ahead of a possible Hong Kong IPO.
$3.5B source β
Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter natively multimodal model with a one-million-token context window for long-horizon coding, knowledge work and deep reasoning, described as the largest open-weights model to date; open weights were published 26-27 July 2026. PerceptionBench was announced the same day.
Moonshot, the Agricultural Bank of China and American Express jointly announced two credit cards that return Kimi memberships based on usage.
China's National Development and Reform Commission reportedly instructed Moonshot, ByteDance and StepFun to reject US-origin capital without explicit government approval.
The US House Committee on Homeland Security subpoenaed DoorDash, Airbnb and Cursor over their use of Kimi models for engineering tasks.
Moonshot was reported to be considering an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Anthropic accused Moonshot, DeepSeek and MiniMax Group of violating its terms of service by using thousands of fraudulent accounts to generate millions of Claude conversations to train their own models.
A one-trillion-parameter multimodal upgrade to Kimi K2 adding native vision via the 400-million-parameter MoonViT encoder, an Agent Swarm feature directing up to 100 sub-agents, and the Kimi Code CLI coding agent.
Moonshot claimed Kimi could handle 2 million Chinese characters per conversation; a user surge caused a two-day outage on 21 March 2024, followed by a company apology.
Moonshot launched its Kimi AI chatbot, capable of processing up to 200,000 Chinese characters per conversation. The name comes from founder Yang Zhilin's English nickname.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
βΈResearch sources Β· 8
primary sources listed
- Moonshot AImoonshot.cn Β· web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Moonshot AI do?
- Beijing-based AI company building the Kimi family of open-weights large language models, agents and coding tools.
- Who are Moonshot AI's investors?
- Moonshot AI's investors include Cathay Innovation, K3 Ventures, Monolith Venture Advisory Limited, Source Code Capital, Xiang He Capital.
- Where is Moonshot AI headquartered?
- Moonshot AI is headquartered in Beijing, CN.