Moonshot AI has announced Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter model that will be released as open-source software on July 27.
Key facts
- •Kimi K3 contains 2.8 trillion parameters.
- •The model will be released as open-source on July 27.
- •Moonshot AI is backed by Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Tencent.
- •The model outperformed Anthropic's Fable system in web interface engineering benchmarks.
- •Shares of competitors Zhipu and MiniMax dropped following the announcement.
Chinese artificial intelligence startup Moonshot has introduced Kimi K3, a new model featuring 2.8 trillion parameters. The company claims the system can compete with top American AI firms, with capabilities spanning coding, knowledge work, and reasoning. The model is scheduled for an open-source release on July 27, allowing developers to download, run, and customize the software.
By the numbers
Technical Capabilities and Benchmarks
Moonshot AI describes Kimi K3 as its most capable flagship model to date, designed to perform tasks such as engineering and coding with minimal human supervision. Independent benchmarks from Artificial Analysis and Arena.ai indicate the model performs on par with OpenAI's GPT and Anthropic's Claude. In blind human-preference tests, Kimi K3 ranked first in web interface engineering, surpassing Anthropic's Fable system.
Market and Regulatory Context
The announcement of Kimi K3 comes as the US government increasingly treats advanced AI as critical national infrastructure subject to export controls. Despite US restrictions on hardware sales, Moonshot—which is backed by Alibaba and Tencent—has developed the model independently. Following the news, shares of domestic competitors Zhipu and MiniMax fell by 27% and 16% respectively in Hong Kong.
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This article was independently rewritten by ManyPress editorial AI from reporting originally published by BBC Technology.
