Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 set to challenge Anthropic's lead with China's largest AI model

Moonshot's upcoming Kimi 3 is expected to close the gap with Anthropic's Opus 4.8

The latest iteration of Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI's Kimi model series is expected to perform at par with or even surpass Anthropic's Opus 4.8, the Financial Times reported, citing anonymous sources. Moonshot's Kimi K2 models have been received well in the open-source AI market, ranking high on benchmarks and demonstrating capabilities that aren't too far behind the latest frontier models. The company's upcoming release, called Kimi K3, is said to take this one step further to close the gap with closed-source models from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. The FT reports Kimi K3 will be the largest open-weight AI model from China, with a parameter count between 2 trillion and 3 trillion, and will be released "in the coming days." Moonshot is also said to be raising fresh capital in a round that would valuate it at $31.5 billion. The company in May raised $2 billion at a $20 billion valuation. The news comes amid a fresh debate on the value of paying AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic for their expensive, closed-source models. Industry leaders fear that AI labs will somehow manage to extract the data their clients submit for use with their AI products like ChatGPT and Claude. Executives are pitching their own products as alternatives, or recommending companies to take cheaper open source models, like those developed by DeepSeek, Z.ai or Moonshot, and train it for their own purposes. The argument has gained momentum, especially as open models from China close the gap with their more expensive, frontier counterparts.

Chinese AI start-up Moonshot to launch model challenging Anthropic's lead

Chinese AI start-up Moonshot is set to release a large language model with capabilities approaching those of frontier US labs such as Anthropic, as the gap narrows between the two countries on state-of-the-art AI. The Beijing-based group is scheduled to release Kimi K3, China's largest AI model to date with 2tn-3tn parameters, in the coming days, according to two people familiar with the matter. The number of parameters refers to the size of the model's neural network, with a higher count generally leading to greater capabilities. Anthropic has not disclosed its models' parameters, but industry experts speculate Opus 4.8 has 1.5tn-2tn parameters. K3 is expected to exceed the performance of Opus 4.8 by mainstream benchmarks, said the people, who added that it would be freely available to download as a so-called open-weight model. However, its capabilities are likely to fall short of Fable, a powerful model that Anthropic has suspended after the US raised concerns over its hacking capabilities. The launch of K3 could challenge the industry consensus that Chinese AI models are eight to 12 months behind US ones in terms of performance. Being open weight would also pose a significant challenge to US labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI whose expensive frontier models remain closed. While the latest models from the US continue to outperform Chinese tools at the most complex tasks, a growing cohort of US tech investors and executives has warned that the gap is narrowing. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of US venture capital group Andreessen Horowitz, wrote last month that GLM-5.2, released by Chinese lab Z.ai, was "the first Chinese AI model to match and often beat the American big lab public AI models with no compromises". Companies from Silicon Valley to Europe are also switching to cheaper Chinese models to reduce their rising bills for technology from US labs. The US's top model makers have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into building out infrastructure and developing the most advanced AI tools. They have begun to charge steeper fees for companies to access them this year. Anthropic will increase the price of Opus 4.8 by 50 per cent to $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens in September, according to its website. Chinese labs such as Moonshot and DeepSeek, meanwhile, have released open-weight models that are cheaper to run and can be downloaded and modified by users. Moonshot's K2.6 model, for instance, costs about a third of Anthropic's Opus 4.8. Anthropic in February accused Chinese AI labs of conducting "industrial-scale distillation attacks" on its models. Distillation refers to the practice of training smaller models on the outputs of more advanced systems, allowing developers to replicate high-level performance without the same computing resources. Some Chinese companies have pushed back such claims, calling it an excuse to protect their monopoly. The valuation of Chinese AI labs has increased significantly this year but remains a tiny fraction of their US peers. Moonshot is raising a new round of funds that would value the company at about $31.5bn, one of the people said. Meanwhile, DeepSeek is starting a new round at about $71bn, the FT reported this week. Anthropic reached a valuation of $965bn in its recent fundraise in May, while OpenAI's latest valuation was $852bn.

China's Moonshot Challenges Anthropic With a Bigger, Cheaper Model | PYMNTS.com

Moonshot is expected to release Kimi K3 in the coming days, the Financial Times reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. The model is expected to have between 2 trillion and 3 trillion parameters, making it China's largest AI model to date. Industry analysts estimate Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 has between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion parameters, though Anthropic has not disclosed the figure. According to the report, Kimi K3 is expected to outperform Claude Opus 4.8 on mainstream benchmarks and will be released as an open-weight model, allowing developers to download and modify it. The model is still expected to trail Claude Fable 5, Anthropic's most powerful model, which was briefly withdrawn after U.S. officials raised concerns about its cybersecurity capabilities. The launch underscores how quickly Chinese AI developers are narrowing the technology gap with U.S. rivals. The Financial Times reported that Kimi K3 could challenge the industry's long-held assumption that Chinese frontier models trail their American counterparts by eight to 12 months. The competitive pressure increasingly extends beyond benchmark performance to economics. PYMNTS reported that Chinese developers, including DeepSeek, have gained enterprise interest by offering AI models at a fraction of the cost charged by leading U.S. providers, forcing businesses to reconsider whether premium frontier models justify their higher prices. According to the Financial Times, Anthropic plans to raise prices for Claude Opus 4.8 in September to $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens. By comparison, Moonshot's current K2.6 model costs roughly one-third as much, while remaining open-weight rather than proprietary. The rivalry has also intensified concerns over intellectual property. The Financial Times noted that Anthropic accused Chinese AI companies earlier this year of conducting "industrial-scale distillation attacks," in which developers train smaller models using outputs from frontier systems instead of building them entirely from scratch. The competitive race is also reshaping AI investment. PYMNTS reported that OpenAI is weighing delaying its IPO until 2027 because advisers are concerned that technology stock volatility could weaken investor demand. Meanwhile, Chinese AI companies continue raising capital, with Moonshot reportedly seeking a valuation of about $31.5 billion while rival DeepSeek is pursuing a valuation of roughly $71 billion, according to the Financial Times.