{"slug": "moonshot-in-talks-with-microsoft-amazon-google-over-k3-revenue-sharing-sources", "title": "Moonshot in talks with Microsoft, Amazon, Google over K3 revenue sharing: sources", "summary": "China's Moonshot AI is in early-stage talks with Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet's Google to host its Kimi K3 model under revenue-sharing agreements, seeking up to 30% of generated revenue, according to three sources. If completed, this would mark the first major revenue-sharing pact between a Chinese AI firm and a US cloud company, despite US national security concerns and criticism from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The discussions are ongoing, with unresolved issues including revenue split, data access, and token auditing.", "body_md": "# Moonshot in talks with Microsoft, Amazon, Google over K3 revenue sharing: sources\n\nThe Chinese AI firm is reportedly seeking up to 30% of proceeds generated from the blockbuster model\n\n[BEIJING] China’s Moonshot AI is negotiating revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet’s Google that would allow the US cloud giants to host its blockbuster Kimi K3 model, three people familiar with the discussions said.\n\nAny deal could mark the first big revenue-sharing pact between a Chinese artificial intelligence firm and a major US cloud company.\n\nThe discussions highlight how China’s leading AI models, often far cheaper than Western offerings, are gaining traction in the US, despite national security concerns in Washington that have led to bans on exports of AI chips to China. They are also taking place despite critical comments about Moonshot from senior US officials.\n\nIPO-bound Moonshot is seeking up to a 30 per cent share of revenue generated from K3-related services on Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud, according to the sources who declined to be identified because the discussions are private.\n\nThat would be in line with terms that sources have said the startup has outlined for major customers using the open-weight model.\n\nThe discussions are at an early stage and there is no certainty they will result in agreements, the sources shared.\n\nMoonshot did not respond to a request for comment about the potential deals. Microsoft, Google, and AWS declined to comment.\n\nMoonshot has come under fire from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who said last month that he might add it to a trade blacklist.\n\nUS officials have accused the Beijing-based company of stealing from Anthropic’s most sophisticated model, Fable, to help create Kimi K3 and illegally acquiring Nvidia chips.\n\nMoonshot has rejected suggestions that Kimi K3‘s performance was achieved via distillation, telling China’s *National Business Daily* last month that its performance gains came from original changes to underlying architecture.\n\nAccording to one of the sources, unresolved issues in Moonshot’s negotiations with the US cloud companies include how revenue might be split, data access and auditing token usage.\n\nTokens are units of text processed by AI models, and measuring their use is central to calculating revenue under usage-based billing.\n\nKimi K3 has posted strong results in third-party evaluations.\n\nArena.ai has ranked it first in a benchmark assessing Web interface-building capabilities, while Artificial Analysis says that it delivers performance comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8, particularly on tests measuring complex, multi-step tasks.\n\nFor big AI model providers like Moonshot, major cloud providers are the main route to enterprise adoption.\n\nAlthough Kimi K3 is an open-weight model that can be downloaded and modified, analysts say few customers are likely to run a system with 2.8 trillion parameters on their own infrastructure because of the huge computing costs involved.\n\nMoonshot has signed similar agreements with some smaller cloud platforms, the sources noted, without providing details.\n\nIn July, Chinese IT services provider Chinasoft International said that it had a revenue-sharing agreement with Moonshot, though it did not disclose how the revenue will be split.\n\nFounded in 2023 by Carnegie Mellon-trained AI researcher Yang Zhilin, Moonshot is backed by several Chinese tech giants including cloud computing giant Alibaba.\n\nThe startup raised more than US$2 billion in May and is preparing for a potential Hong Kong listing, sources have said.\n\nAlibaba is also seeking revenue-sharing agreements with major users of its new open-source AI model, sources have also noted. 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Free.\n\nShare with us your feedback on BT's products and services\n\n[TRENDING NOW](/pulse?ref=trending-now)\n\nNDR 2026: Singapore to create new Western island to support 'new generation of industries'\n\nMSCI drops S-E Asian heavyweights Sembcorp, GoTo and Ayala Land from global benchmarks\n\nE-commerce is killing ‘real’ commerce, says China’s beverage king Zhong Shanshan\n\nAsia-Pacific aviation: is up really the only way?", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/moonshot-in-talks-with-microsoft-amazon-google-over-k3-revenue-sharing-sources", "canonical_source": "https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/moonshot-talks-microsoft-amazon-google-over-k3-revenue-sharing-sources", "published_at": "2026-08-26 12:44:01+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-26 18:15:17.644175+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-policy", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Moonshot AI", "Microsoft", "Amazon", "Alphabet", "Google", "Kimi K3", "Scott Bessent", "Anthropic"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/moonshot-in-talks-with-microsoft-amazon-google-over-k3-revenue-sharing-sources", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/moonshot-in-talks-with-microsoft-amazon-google-over-k3-revenue-sharing-sources.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/moonshot-in-talks-with-microsoft-amazon-google-over-k3-revenue-sharing-sources.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/moonshot-in-talks-with-microsoft-amazon-google-over-k3-revenue-sharing-sources.jsonld"}}