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[ARTICLE · art-63419] src=thestack.technology ↗ pub= topic=artificial-intelligence verified=true sentiment=· neutral

China's open weight Kimi K3 model snaps at the heels of US labs

Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI launched the 2.8 trillion-parameter Kimi K3 open weights model on Thursday, with benchmark data showing it trails Anthropic and OpenAI's leading models by just one generation and matches or exceeds them in coding and agentic tasks. Moonshot said structural changes including the Kimi Delta Attention mechanism and Attention Residuals architecture improved scaling efficiency 2.5x over its predecessor Kimi K2.

read1 min views50 publishedJul 17, 2026
China's open weight Kimi K3 model snaps at the heels of US labs
Image: Thestack (auto-discovered)

Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI is launching one of the largest open weights models yet with its 2.8 trillion-parameter Kimi K3, putting it on par with frontier counterparts.

The model was unveiled Thursday alongside benchmark data showing it is just a generation behind Anthropic and OpenAI’s leading models in most tests and on par with or ahead for some coding and agentic applications.

Moonshot said structural changes, including the use of its new Kimi Delta Attention mechanism and Attention Residuals architecture, meant Kimi K3 showed a 2.5x improvement in scaling efficiency over its predecessor, Kimi K2.

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