HomeMoonshot AI raises $2B at $20B valuation amid open-source AI surge
Chinese AI companies may lack the vast cash reserves of their Western counterparts, yet their open-source models continue to attract significant interest from users willing to accept lower performance for more affordable inference. Investors are paying attention.
Moonshot AI, a Beijing-based AI lab behind the popular Kimi series of open-weight large language models, has raised approximately $2 billion at a $20 billion valuation, according to a post from Huafeng Capital, which advised certain investors in the round.
The round was led by Long-Z Investment, the venture capital arm of Chinese food delivery giant Meituan, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. Other participants included Tsinghua Capital, China Mobile, and CPE Yuanfeng, per the post.
According to Huafeng Capital, Moonshot raised $3.9 billion over the past six months. The company was valued at $4.3 billion at the end of 2025, reports indicate, and by early 2026 that valuation had more than doubled to $10 billion after a $700 million funding round.
Founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a former researcher at Meta AI and Google Brain, Moonshot AI quickly emerged as one of China’s most popular AI labs. Its open-weight Kimi K2.5 large language model made waves in the coding community earlier this year, nearly topping benchmarks and achieving performance levels comparable to those of OpenAI and Anthropic's models at the time.
The company's newest model, Kimi K2.6, is currently the second most widely used large language model on the distribution platform OpenRouter.
This fundraising round occurs amid surging investor interest in open-weight AI models from Chinese labs. Moonshot's annual recurring revenue exceeded $200 million in April, fueled by rapid growth in paid subscriptions and API usage, according to the financial advisor's post.
DeepSeek, arguably the most prominent Chinese AI lab, is reportedly in discussions to raise external capital for the first time, at a valuation of approximately $45 billion.
Some of Moonshot's competitors have already gone public, driven by demand for their AI models. Zhipu AI, listed in Hong Kong as Knowledge Atlas Technology, closed Thursday with a market capitalization of HK$434.7 billion (approximately $55.9 billion), while MiniMax ended at HK$257.3 billion ($33 billion), after both stocks rallied following new model releases.
Moonshot's Kimi models compete against OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, as well as ByteDance's Doubao, Alibaba's Qwen, Zhipu's Z.ai, and DeepSeek.
Moonshot's investors include Alibaba, Tencent, HongShan (formerly Sequoia China), ZhenFund, IDG Capital, and 5Y Capital.
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Chinese AI companies may lack the vast cash reserves of their Western counterparts, yet their open-source models continue to attract significant interest from users willing to accept lower performance for more affordable inference. Investors are paying attention.
Moonshot AI, a Beijing-based AI lab behind the popular Kimi series of open-weight large language models, has raised approximately $2 billion at a $20 billion valuation, according to a post from Huafeng Capital, which advised certain investors in the round.
The round was led by Long-Z Investment, the venture capital arm of Chinese food delivery giant Meituan, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. Other participants included Tsinghua Capital, China Mobile, and CPE Yuanfeng, per the post.
According to Huafeng Capital, Moonshot raised $3.9 billion over the past six months. The company was valued at $4.3 billion at the end of 2025, reports indicate, and by early 2026 that valuation had more than doubled to $10 billion after a $700 million funding round.
Founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a former researcher at Meta AI and Google Brain, Moonshot AI quickly emerged as one of China’s most popular AI labs. Its open-weight Kimi K2.5 large language model made waves in the coding community earlier this year, nearly topping benchmarks and achieving performance levels comparable to those of OpenAI and Anthropic's models at the time.
The company's newest model, Kimi K2.6, is currently the second most widely used large language model on the distribution platform OpenRouter.
This fundraising round occurs amid surging investor interest in open-weight AI models from Chinese labs. Moonshot's annual recurring revenue exceeded $200 million in April, fueled by rapid growth in paid subscriptions and API usage, according to the financial advisor's post.
DeepSeek, arguably the most prominent Chinese AI lab, is reportedly in discussions to raise external capital for the first time, at a valuation of approximately $45 billion.
Some of Moonshot's competitors have already gone public, driven by demand for their AI models. Zhipu AI, listed in Hong Kong as Knowledge Atlas Technology, closed Thursday with a market capitalization of HK$434.7 billion (approximately $55.9 billion), while MiniMax ended at HK$257.3 billion ($33 billion), after both stocks rallied following new model releases.
Moonshot's Kimi models compete against OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, as well as ByteDance's Doubao, Alibaba's Qwen, Zhipu's Z.ai, and DeepSeek.
Moonshot's investors include Alibaba, Tencent, HongShan (formerly Sequoia China), ZhenFund, IDG Capital, and 5Y Capital.
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Three AI pioneers argue for keeping big models open as safety worries grow
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