Moonshot
Funding History
| Series B · 02/2024 | $2.5B |
|---|---|
| Growth Round · 08/2024 | $3.3B |
| Growth Round · 02/2026 | $10.0B |
| Growth Round · 05/2026 | $20.0B |
| Growth Round · 07/2026 | $35.0B |
About
Moonshot AI is a Beijing-based large language model developer founded in March 2023 by CEO Yang Zhilin alongside fellow Tsinghua University alumni Zhou Xinyu, Wu Yuxin and Zhang Yutao. Its Kimi chatbot, launched in October 2023 with an early focus on long-context processing, has grown into a family of open-weight models — Kimi K2 (July 2025, 1 trillion parameters) and Kimi K3 (July 2026, 2.8 trillion parameters) — that Moonshot has positioned as rivals to frontier US models.
- CEO
- Yang Zhilin
- Headquarters
- Beijing, China
- Founded
- March 2023
- Employees
- ~300 (2026)
Overview
Moonshot AI — known in Chinese as Yuèzhī Ànmiàn, or "Dark Side of the Moon" — is a Beijing-based artificial intelligence lab founded in March 2023 by Tsinghua University alumni Yang Zhilin, Zhou Xinyu, Wu Yuxin and Zhang Yutao. Yang, a Carnegie Mellon PhD who previously worked at Google Brain and Meta AI, is CEO. The company's flagship product is the Kimi chatbot, launched in October 2023, now built on its open-weight Kimi K2 and K3 model families.
Moonshot's valuation climbed from $2.5 billion in February 2024 to $35 billion by July 2026, backed across successive rounds by Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan's Long-Z Investments and, most recently, China's state-backed National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund. The July 2026 Kimi K3 release — a 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight model — drove a sixfold surge in daily sales and helped the company blow past its own fundraising target.
The company reported annualized recurring revenue of roughly $200 million in April 2026 and $300 million by June 2026, and it has been weighing a Hong Kong IPO: a shareholder resolution circulated in July 2026 set a six-month outer timeline, and Moonshot was separately in talks for a follow-on round at a $50 billion pre-money valuation as a final private raise before any listing.
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