Shares in Chinese AI firms Zhipu and MiniMax tumbled 27% and 16% respectively in Hong Kong on Friday after Moonshot AI unveiled a massive new artificial intelligence model that it says can rival top American firms.
Moonshot AI showed off Kimi K3 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, a model containing 2.8 trillion parameters – a measure of scale and processing power. Unlike closed, proprietary systems from OpenAI or Anthropic, Kimi K3 will be released as an open-source model on 27 July, making it the world’s first in the three-trillion-parameter class that can be freely downloaded, run and customised by outside developers.
“Moonshot AI launches Kimi K3 with 2.8 trillion parameters, sending rival shares down sharply.”
The launch comes at a highly sensitive moment for global tech, just weeks after the US government abruptly forced American developer Anthropic to temporarily withdraw its flagship Fable and Mythos models due to severe cybersecurity concerns. While Washington has since lifted those restrictions, the initial move highlighted how the US now views advanced AI software as critical national infrastructure, labelling frontier models as vital national security assets subject to strict export controls.
Moonshot AI, heavily backed by domestic tech giants Alibaba and Tencent, has quickly risen to the forefront of China’s generative AI ecosystem. In a statement the company said Kimi K3 stands as its “most capable flagship model to date”, built to operate with “minimal human supervision” for tasks such as engineering and coding.
Third-party evaluations from Artificial Analysis and Arena.ai show the model performing on a par with leading US models such as OpenAI’s GPT and Anthropic’s Claude. In independent blind human-preference tests, Kimi K3 ranked first in web interface engineering, outperforming Anthropic’s Fable.
While the system’s massive size means running it locally requires significant computing equipment, making it open-source could heavily disrupt Silicon Valley’s commercial models. The rapid arrival of Kimi K3 suggests Chinese firms are successfully bypassing US regulatory barriers and advancing independently despite restrictions on hardware sales.