Moonshot AI's ARR hit $300 million in June, up from $200 million in April, as the startup prepares for a Hong Kong listing that could value it at over $30 billion.
Moonshot AI has told investors it plans to list in Hong Kong within six months, capitalizing on the momentum from its latest model Kimi K3 that stunned the industry and sent global tech stocks lower last week. The startup distributed a shareholder resolution seeking approval for the offering, people familiar with the matter said.
The three-year-old company is wrapping a fundraising round that could value it at more than $30 billion, the people said. Moonshot decided the timing was right after its annual recurring revenue hit $300 million in June, up from $200 million in April, Bloomberg News has reported.
Kimi K3, an open-weight model with 2.8 trillion parameters, outperforms all rivals except Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 on overall capability, Moonshot said. Artificial Analysis ranked it ahead of Anthropic's Opus 4.8 on some frontier benchmarks, making it the first Chinese open-weight model to achieve that milestone. The model is priced at roughly Anthropic Sonnet levels, signaling Moonshot believes it can charge a premium to other Chinese models, the people said.
Moonshot was founded in early 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a former Tsinghua University professor who previously worked at Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. The company is called the Dark Side of the Moon in Chinese, after Yang's favorite Pink Floyd album.
The startup has held talks with China International Capital Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. about working on the offering, Bloomberg News has reported. Moonshot has begun dismantling a "red chip" structure, a requirement for a smoother overseas listing process.
Moonshot had operated in the shadow of better-known names such as DeepSeek, which itself roiled Silicon Valley with a powerful model in 2025. Kimi K3 has put it at the forefront of Chinese AI development alongside aggressive labs like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s Qwen and Z.AI. DeepSeek is planning an IPO in 2027 while seeking a second round of capital.
Beijing is stepping up support for domestic AI development. President Xi Jinping hailed China's advances in low-cost AI while calling for a more open global technological order.
The company sells tiered subscription plans for its chatbot and offers its underlying technology to enterprise clients. It recently launched a general-purpose AI agent called Kimi Work. Its business remains smaller than the likes of Z.AI, which is on track for $1 billion of annual sales, Bloomberg News has reported.
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