Moonshot AI raises $2B at $20B valuation amid surging demand for open-source models

Moonshot AI, an AI laboratory located in Beijing and recognized for its Kimi series of large language models, has successfully secured around $2 billion, achieving a valuation of $20 billion, as reported by Huafeng Capital, which assisted some investors during this funding round. The investment was spearheaded by Long-Z Investment, the venture capital division of Meituan, along with contributions from Tsinghua Capital, China Mobile, and CPE Yuanfeng. Over the past six months, Moonshot's total fundraising has reached $3.9 billion. Founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a former researcher at Meta AI and Google Brain, the company gained attention after its Kimi K2.5 model excelled in coding benchmarks, competing with OpenAI and Anthropic. Its latest model, Kimi K2.6, ranks as the second most utilized LLM on OpenRouter, with annual recurring revenue surpassing $200 million as of April, fueled by subscriptions and API usage. Investors are increasingly interested in Chinese open-weight AI models, as competitors like DeepSeek are negotiating their first external funding at a $45 billion valuation, while Zhipu AI and MiniMax have gone public, boasting market caps of HK$434.7 billion and HK$257.3 billion, respectively. Notable backers of Moonshot include Alibaba, Tencent, HongShan, ZhenFund, IDG Capital, and 5Y Capital.