moonshotai/Kimi-K3

Moonshot AI released Kimi-K3 with a new license that requires large Model-as-a-Service businesses (those exceeding $20 million in aggregate revenue over any consecutive 12 months) to enter a separate agreement, replacing the modified MIT license used for K2. OpenRouter already offers K3 from seven providers at the same pricing as Moonshot AI: $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens.

Kimi introduced their own janky modified version of the MIT license https://huggingface.co/moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Instruct/blob/main/LICENSE with K2 back in July 2025. That license just added this paragraph requiring attribution beyond a certain size of commercial entity: Our only modification part is that, if the Software or any derivative works thereof is used for any of your commercial products or services that have more than 100 million monthly active users, or more than 20 million US dollars or equivalent in other currencies in monthly revenue, you shall prominently display "Kimi K2" on the user interface of such product or service. The K3 license https://huggingface.co/moonshotai/Kimi-K3/blob/main/LICENSE no longer calls itself "modified MIT" and goes further, requiring a separate agreement with Moonshot for large "Model as a Service" businesses: If the Licensee or any of its affiliates operates a Model as a Service business, and the aggregate revenue of the Licensee and its affiliates exceeds 20 million US dollars or the equivalent in other currencies in total over any consecutive 12 months, the Licensee must enter into a separate agreement with Moonshot AI before using the Software or its derivative works for any commercial purpose. To Kimi's credit, they make no attempt to describe this as an "open source" license in their own materials, consistently using the term "open weight" in its place. OpenRouter is already offering K3 from 7 providers https://openrouter.ai/moonshotai/kimi-k3 , most of which are at the same $3/million input and $15/million output as Moonshot AI themselves. Tags: ai https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai , generative-ai https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai , llms https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms , llm-pricing https://simonwillison.net/tags/llm-pricing , llm-release https://simonwillison.net/tags/llm-release , ai-in-china https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-in-china , moonshot https://simonwillison.net/tags/moonshot , kimi https://simonwillison.net/tags/kimi , janky-licenses https://simonwillison.net/tags/janky-licenses