Moonshot AI accelerates Hong Kong IPO plans

Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI raised over $3.5 billion in a Series F round, with its post-money valuation reaching $35 billion. The round, led by China’s National AI Industry Investment Fund and others, closed early after subscriptions exceeded the target, prompting Moonshot AI to bring forward a pre-IPO Series G round aimed at a $50 billion valuation.

The fundraising surge follows the July 16 debut of Kimi K3, a large language model with 2.8 trillion parameters. K3 scored 1,679 points on Code Arena, beating Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 at 1,631 points and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol at 1,618 points, though Moonshot AI says it still trails those models overall. The company denied allegations that K3 was distilled from other companies’ models.

K3’s API output price rose to $15 per million tokens from K2.6’s $4, yet subscriptions sold out within 48 hours. Its licensing terms require businesses generating over $20 million in annual revenue from services using the model to reach a commercial agreement with Moonshot AI, and sources said the company may seek up to a 30% revenue share.

Moonshot AI expects final fund transfer for the pre-IPO round by August 27 and plans to file with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by September 30, with a listing anticipated between late 2026 and the first quarter of 2027.