Moonshot AI is a Beijing-based artificial-intelligence startup, founded in March 2023 by Tsinghua University graduates, that builds the 📝Kimi family of large language models and the consumer AI assistant of the same name.
Moonshot AI develops open-weight large language models known initially for very long-context analysis and AI-powered search, and now for general-purpose chat. Its Kimi K2, released as open source in July 2025, established the company as a leading Chinese open-model developer; the subsequent Kimi K2.6 — a roughly one-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model with 384 experts — became one of the most-used models on the OpenRouter distribution platform, competing directly with offerings from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
The company has raised capital on a steep trajectory. After reaching a $3.3 billion valuation in August 2024 on backing from Tencent and Gaorong Capital, it was valued near $4.3 billion at the end of 2025 and then at about $20 billion in May 2026, following a $2 billion round led by Meituan's Long-Z Investments alongside Tsinghua Capital, China Mobile, and CPE Yuanfeng. Reporting in 2026 put its annual recurring revenue above $200 million and described a further round seeking a valuation as high as $30 billion.
Moonshot AI is grouped with the cohort of well-funded Chinese AI startups racing to build frontier models, distinguished by its open-weight release strategy and the consumer traction of Kimi.