China’s Moonshot AI Passes Funding Goal to Hit $35 Billion Value

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.

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. Most Read from Bloomberg - 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 - 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 The 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. The 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. Moonshot on Monday released its weights — the numeric values the model learned during training — — allowing developers to download, tweak and host the technology freely. Moonshot'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. Moonshot 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. Moonshot 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.