Crowds rushed to an obscure corner of China’s premier tech summit, moving past monumental booths from Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings to catch a glimpse of the hottest name in domestic artificial intelligence.
Developers and users at the World AI Conference jostled for a closer look at Moonshot and its Kimi K3 — the giant 2.8 trillion-parameter model whose release on Friday showed China was closing the gap on OpenAI and Anthropic PBC far quicker than anticipated. The startup became an instant global sensation, drawing comparisons to DeepSeek’s 2025 breakout and plaudits from the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Such was the crush over the weekend that Moonshot blew through its entire stock of branded swag in just a few hours.
Moonshot’s emergence is a vindication not just for the country’s AI industry, but also for founder Yang Zhilin. The reclusive 33-year-old was the poster child of Chinese AI in the post-ChatGPT era — an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University, Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google who’d been expected to help propel the country into the big leagues. Then DeepSeek emerged, and he’s toiled in its shadow ever since.