Microsoft, Amazon, and Google May Host a Chinese AI Model in Their Clouds — Media Reports
American cloud giants may host a Chinese neural network on their servers and offer it to their customers, sources told Reuters. Negotiations are underway despite accusations in the U.S. that Moonshot has stolen technology and threats of sanctions
Chinese startup Moonshot AI is in talks with Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet regarding a "revenue-sharing" agreement / Photo: agustin.photo/Shutterstock
Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI, which impressed the market in July with its cutting-edge neural network, is in talks with Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet to enter into so-called revenue-sharing agreements, Reuters reports, citing sources familiar with the matter. The deals under discussion could allow the American cloud giants to host Moonshot’s flagship neural network, Kimi K3, on their servers and offer access to it to their customers. If even one of these agreements is concluded, it could set a precedent for such a major partnership between a Chinese artificial intelligence developer and leading U.S. cloud providers, Reuters notes.
Details
Moonshot, which is preparing for an IPO in Hong Kong, expects to generate up to 30% of its revenue from services related to deploying its K3 AI model on the Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud platforms, according to Reuters sources. Such terms would be in line with those the startup previously offered to large clients using its model with open weights, they noted.
According to one of the agency’s sources, the main unresolved issues include the exact revenue-sharing ratios, rules for data access, and mechanisms for auditing tokens—the volume of text processed by the neural network, on which pricing depends.
However, sources speaking to Reuters note that Moonshot's negotiations with Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet are in the early stages and do not guarantee that deals will be finalized.
Moonshot representatives did not respond to inquiries from Reuters, and the U.S. companies declined to comment on the matter.
Why Is This Important?
Ongoing negotiations show that cutting-edge Chinese AI models are rapidly gaining popularity in the U.S. due to their lower cost compared to their Western counterparts. Interest in them is growing, despite Washington’s national security concerns, bans on the export of advanced American chips to China, and criticism of the startup by U.S. authorities, Reuters notes. Earlier, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened to blacklist Moonshot: In the U.S., the Beijing-based company is suspected of illegally purchasing Nvidia chips and “distillation”—that is, training its neural networks using data from Anthropic’s advanced American AI model, Fable. Moonshot rejects these allegations: last month, company representatives stated that the leap in their neural network’s performance was the result of optimization and changes to its underlying architecture.
Partnerships with cloud giants remain the primary way for neural network developers to enter the enterprise market, according to Reuters. Although Kimi K3 is open-source and available for download, few business customers will run the system—with its 2.8 trillion parameters—on their own infrastructure due to the enormous computational costs, the agency explains.
At the same time, Moonshot already has experience with similar partnerships involving smaller cloud providers, according to Reuters sources. They did not name the companies in question. In July, Chinese IT provider Chinasoft International announced a similar agreement with an AI startup, though it did not disclose any financial details, Reuters reports.
What You Need to Know About Moonshot and Kimi K3
The Kimi K3 AI model was unveiled in July by the Chinese AI lab Moonshot, which stated that its neural network’s performance is approaching that of Anthropic’s cutting-edge Fable model. The Chinese AI’s strong performance was later confirmed by independent studies. For example, the Arena.ai platform recognized Kimi K3 as the leader in a benchmark for web interface creation, while the Artificial Analysis service compared its performance to OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8, particularly highlighting its ability to solve complex, multi-step tasks.
Moonshot is backed by China's largest technology companies, including Alibaba, according to Reuters. In May of this year, the startup raised more than $2 billion in investment and is now actively preparing for a potential listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
