The developer of China's best AI model aims to raise $3 billion in an IPO in Hong Kong — Reuters
The July release of the Kimi K3 model triggered a sell-off of shares in chipmakers and cloud computing giants in the U.S.
According to Moonshot, its Kimi K3 outperforms all competing models in terms of overall capabilities, with the exception of Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 / Photo: agustin.photo / Shutterstock.com
China-based Moonshot, the developer of the popular Kimi family of AI models, has confidentially filed to conduct an initial public offering in Hong Kong, Reuters reports, citing three sources.
The company expects to raise $3 billion through its IPO, one of the agency’s sources said. According to two other sources, Moonshot was valued at $50 billion as part of its ongoing funding round. E
Before filing its application, Moonshot dissolved its offshore corporate structure and transferred its registration to mainland China, according to sources who spoke with Reuters. They said that Goldman Sachs, China International Capital Corporation (CICC), and Deutsche Bank are involved in preparing the IPO.
The startup did not respond to Reuters' request for comment.
The Kimi K3 Phenomenon
As of September 2, the new version of the Moonshot model, called Kimi K3, ranked first among 74 models from Chinese developers in the BenchLM rankings.
Moonshot claims that K3 is comparable to the models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic, but costs customers much less, according to Bloomberg. After the model’s release, demand grew so much that the company temporarily stopped accepting new subscriptions in order to allocate computing power to serve existing customers.
The July release of K3 triggered a sell-off of shares in chipmakers and cloud giants in the U.S. According to calculations by IG analyst Tony Sycamore, the combined market value of privately held companies OpenAI and Anthropic fell by $314 billion at that time. Morningstar considered this market panic to be excessive.
A few days later, Bloomberg reported, citing sources, that Moonshot’s valuation had reached $31.5 billion during its summer funding round. The agency noted that the startup is seeking to capitalize on the buzz surrounding K3 to increase its valuation to $50 billion ahead of its IPO.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
