{"slug": "chinas-moonshot-ai-passes-funding-goal-to-hit-35-billion-value", "title": "China’s Moonshot AI Passes Funding Goal to Hit $35 Billion Value", "summary": "Moonshot AI, a Beijing-based startup, secured a $35 billion valuation after raising $3.5 billion in a funding round, far exceeding its initial $1-2 billion target, driven by the success of its Kimi K3 model. The company is now seeking a new round at a $50 billion pre-money valuation ahead of a potential Hong Kong IPO this year. The K3, with 2.8 trillion parameters and a 1 million-token context window, has been released as an open-weight model, sparking a tech stock selloff and drawing scrutiny from a White House official over alleged use of restricted Nvidia chips.", "body_md": "(Bloomberg) -- Moonshot AI secured a $35 billion valuation after raising a larger-than-anticipated $3.5 billion in a just-closed round of financing, riding the momentum from a breakthrough Kimi K3 model that sent ripples through Silicon Valley.\n\nMost Read from Bloomberg\n\n-\n[Chip Rout Deepens on Circular Funding, China Competition Fears](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-28/korean-stocks-sink-as-chipmakers-plung-on-deepening-ai-fatigue?utm_campaign=bn&utm_medium=distro&utm_source=yahooUS) -\n[Apple Set to Make Big Smart Home Push With Siri AI at Center](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-28/new-apple-tv-4k-box-homepod-mini-and-siri-ai-smart-home-hub-are-coming?utm_campaign=bn&utm_medium=distro&utm_source=yahooUS)\n\nThe Beijing-based startup managed to secure far more than the $1 billion to $2 billion it initially targeted, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified to talk about private information. Moonshot is now reaching out to potential backers for a new funding round at a $50 billion pre-money valuation, aiming to secure capital a final time before an initial public offering in Hong Kong as soon as this year. A Moonshot spokesperson didn't respond to an emailed request for comment.\n\nThe Chinese startup's frenetic deal-making underscores the enormous investor interest in a private firm that this month leapt to the forefront of the industry with the K3, which approached the performance of frontier models by Anthropic PBC and OpenAI. Its debut triggered a selloff in tech stocks and was hailed as another \"DeepSeek moment\" — providing evidence that the country's AI labs can keep pace with the US despite export curbs and computing constraints.\n\nMoonshot on Monday released its weights — the numeric values the model learned during training — — allowing developers to download, tweak and host the technology freely.\n\nMoonshot's success has also thrust it into the center of US-Chinese tensions. A White House official accused the company of training the K3 on restricted Nvidia Corp. chips, while reiterating allegations of distillation — the practice of extracting outputs from top competitors to boost performance. Moonshot has not responded to requests for comment on the matter.\n\nMoonshot developed the K3 with 2.8 trillion parameters — a rough measure of AI complexity — making it the world's largest open-weight model at a time when US rivals keep their technology proprietary. The model also features a 1 million-token context window, enabling it to process massive documents or codebases in a single prompt.\n\nMoonshot achieved $300 million of annual recurring revenue — a gauge of future sales — in June, jumping from $200 million in April, Bloomberg News reported earlier. Since the K3's launch, daily sales have surged at least six times, one person familiar with the matter has said.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/chinas-moonshot-ai-passes-funding-goal-to-hit-35-billion-value", "canonical_source": "https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/china-moonshot-ai-passes-funding-081902952.html", "published_at": "2026-07-29 08:19:02+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-29 09:52:12.730858+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-startups", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Moonshot AI", "Kimi K3", "Anthropic PBC", "OpenAI", "Nvidia Corp.", "Hong Kong", "White House"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/chinas-moonshot-ai-passes-funding-goal-to-hit-35-billion-value", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/chinas-moonshot-ai-passes-funding-goal-to-hit-35-billion-value.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/chinas-moonshot-ai-passes-funding-goal-to-hit-35-billion-value.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/chinas-moonshot-ai-passes-funding-goal-to-hit-35-billion-value.jsonld"}}