Member-only story
Kimi K3’s license reads like MIT until $20M in revenue. Here’s what Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 license permits, restricts, and requires, clause by clause. #
A 2.8-trillion-parameter model became downloadable this week, for free, by anyone with a fast connection and about 1.4 terabytes of spare disk. That’s the headline. The more useful document is the one sitting next to the weights: the Kimi K3 License. For most of its length it reads like MIT. Then, about a third of the way in, it starts asking a question MIT never asks. How much money is your business making off this?
That question is worth answering before you build on Kimi K3, whether that’s a weekend project, a startup’s core product, or one feature inside something bigger. Below is what the license actually permits, what it restricts, who it restricts, and where the real ambiguity sits.
Quick context on what Kimi K3 is #
Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based lab backed by Alibaba, released Kimi K3 through its own API on July 16, 2026. The full weights followed on July 27. Kimi K3 debuted at №3 on the Artificial Analysis leaderboard, behind Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol, but it beat both on Arena.ai’s front-end web…