{"slug": "china-based-moonshot-ai-seeks-50b-valuation-and-could-go-public-this-year-report", "title": "China-based Moonshot AI seeks $50B valuation — and could go public this year: report", "summary": "China-based AI firm Moonshot is seeking a $50 billion valuation in a new fundraising round ahead of a potential Hong Kong initial public offering later this year, according to Bloomberg. The Beijing-based company, founded in 2023 by Carnegie Mellon-trained AI researcher Yang Zhilin, recently launched its Kimi K3 large-language model trained on 2.8 trillion parameters, which outperformed Anthropic's Opus 4.8 and OpenAI's ChatGPT 5.5 on most coding tasks in benchmark tests.", "body_md": "# China-based Moonshot AI seeks $50B valuation — and could go public this year: report\n\nSee more of our coverage in your search results.\n\n[Add The New York Post on Google](https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=nypost.com)\n\nChinese AI firm Moonshot is reportedly seeking a $50 billion valuation in a new fundraising round – days after the release of its powerful Kimi K3 model sparked chatter that China was catching up to US giants like OpenAI and Anthropic.\n\nThe Beijing-based firm is looking to secure the funds before going public in Hong Kong, [Bloomberg reported](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-21/china-s-moonshot-in-talks-on-pre-ipo-funds-at-50-billion-value), citing people familiar with the matter.\n\nThe initial public offering could take place later this year.\n\nMoonshot is on track to close a financing round at a $31.5 billion valuation that has been underway since earlier this summer, according to the report.\n\nFrom there, the firm plans to immediately seek additional funds at the $50 billion violation ahead of its IPO.\n\nThe company – founded in 2023 by Carnegie Mellon-trained AI researcher Yang Zhilin – drew global attention with the launch of Kimi K3.\n\nThe large-language model was trained on 2.8 trillion [parameters](https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-definitions/what-are-parameters), making it the largest open-source model ever released.\n\nMoonshot did not immediately return a request for comment.\n\nYang, 33, formerly worked at Meta and Google.\n\nBenchmark tests showed Kimi K3 outperforming Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 model and OpenAI’s ChatGPT 5.5 on most coding tasks, though it is still less powerful that Anthropic’s cutting-edge Fable model.\n\nEarlier this week, [Moonshot said it would temporarily pause new subscriptions](https://nypost.com/2026/07/20/business/chinas-moonshot-ai-pauses-subscriptions-for-powerful-kimi-k3-model-due-to-high-demand/) for the model after experiencing “unprecedented compute challenges” and would instead focus on serving existing paid customers for the time being.\n\nUS officials have fretted [about the increasing popularity of open-source Chinese AI models](https://nypost.com/2026/06/22/business/cheap-chinese-ai-models-are-quickly-gaining-customers-across-the-us-market/), which are freely available to download and much cheaper than closed-sourced models offered by Anthropic, OpenAI and other frontier labs.\n\nThe trend has only increased tensions in the US-China AI race.\n\nAnthropic publicly accused Moonshot of ripping off its technology in a February blog post.\n\nAntropic currently has a $965 billion valuation and is planning to go public later this year.\n\nSam Altman’s OpenAI has an $852 billion valuation and has also announced plans to go public, though some reports say its debut could be delayed until 2027.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-based-moonshot-ai-seeks-50b-valuation-and-could-go-public-this-year-report", "canonical_source": "https://nypost.com/2026/07/21/business/china-based-moonshot-ai-seeks-50-billion-valuation-could-go-public-this-year-report/", "published_at": "2026-07-21 16:44:23+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-21 16:47:26.820705+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-startups", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Moonshot AI", "Yang Zhilin", "Kimi K3", "Anthropic", "OpenAI", "Bloomberg", "Hong Kong", "Carnegie Mellon"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-based-moonshot-ai-seeks-50b-valuation-and-could-go-public-this-year-report", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-based-moonshot-ai-seeks-50b-valuation-and-could-go-public-this-year-report.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-based-moonshot-ai-seeks-50b-valuation-and-could-go-public-this-year-report.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-based-moonshot-ai-seeks-50b-valuation-and-could-go-public-this-year-report.jsonld"}}