Moonshot AI's Upcoming Kimi K3 Takes Aim at Frontier Models From OpenAI and Anthropic
Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI prepares to release Kimi K3, a new open-weight model that reportedly matches or surpasses Anthropic's Opus 4.8 in performance. The Financial Times reports that the upcoming model features between 2 trillion and 3 trillion parameters, making it the largest open-weight AI model to come out of China. The release is expected in the coming days.
Moonshot's current Kimi K2 models already rank highly on benchmarks and demonstrate capabilities that trail closely behind leading frontier models. The K3 release aims to close the gap even further with closed-source offerings from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. The company is also reportedly raising fresh capital in a funding round that would value it at $31.5 billion, a significant jump from its $20 billion valuation in May.
The launch arrives as industry leaders increasingly question the value of paying premium prices for closed-source AI models. Executives worry that AI labs could extract and use client data submitted through products like ChatGPT and Claude. As a result, many now recommend cheaper open source alternatives from developers like DeepSeek, Z.ai, and Moonshot, which companies can train and customize for their own purposes without relying on third-party providers.