Moonshot AI company profile: valuation, funding & revenue

This Moonshot AI company profile covers the company's valuation, revenue, funding rounds, investors and history. Moonshot AI works in artificial intelligence, with a focus on large language models (Kimi). It was founded in 2023 and is headquartered in Beijing, China. Its latest valuation on record is US$20 billion (May 2026). Every figure links to a public source, and anything the company hasn't disclosed is marked as such.

Revenue

More than US$200 million in annual recurring revenue — ARR from subscriptions and API usage (as reported), as of April 2026. Source: TechCrunch.

Funding history

Moonshot AI timeline

Key dates from the sources on this page, oldest first. Metric snapshots are listed after the funding events.

• 2023 — Moonshot AI is founded in Beijing by Yang Zhilin (CEO).
• Early 2026 — Equity round: About US$700M, valuing the company at About US$10B.
• May 2026 — Equity round: About US$2B, valuing the company at US$20B. Investors: Long-Z Investments (Meituan) (lead); Tsinghua Capital, China Mobile, CPE Yuanfeng.
• July 2026 — Later funding: Bloomberg reported a US$3.5 billion raise at about US$35 billion, with China's national AI industry fund among lead investors.
• May 2026 — Capital raised: US$3.9 billion over six months, according to adviser Huafeng Capital.

Investors

Overview

Moonshot AI is one of China's leading artificial intelligence companies. It develops the Kimi family of large language models and the Kimi chatbot app. Kimi first became known in China for handling very long documents, letting users upload entire reports, books or contracts and ask questions about them. More recently, Moonshot has released "open-weight" models, whose parameters anyone can download and run, which have become popular with developers around the world, especially for coding.

Yang Zhilin founded Moonshot AI in Beijing in 2023. He studied at Tsinghua University and Carnegie Mellon, and worked as a researcher at Google Brain and Meta AI. The company's name is a nod to Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon", one of the founder's favourite albums. Moonshot was one of a group of Chinese AI startups, sometimes called the "AI tigers", that raised large sums after ChatGPT's launch.

Products

• Kimi chatbot: a consumer AI assistant app, with free use and paid subscriptions.
• Kimi models: open-weight large language models, including Kimi K2.5 and K2.6, which drew attention for strong coding performance. TechCrunch reported that Kimi K2.6 was the second most used model on OpenRouter, a popular platform for accessing AI models.
• API: businesses and developers pay to use Kimi models through Moonshot's platform.

How Moonshot makes money

Moonshot earns from paid subscriptions to the Kimi app and from API usage by businesses and developers. In April 2026, its annual recurring revenue topped US$200 million, according to TechCrunch. Releasing models as open weights means some users run them on their own hardware without paying Moonshot, but it also builds a large developer community, drives API usage and strengthens the brand internationally.

Funding history

Moonshot's valuation rose extremely quickly in 2026:

• End of 2025: reported valuation of about US$4.3 billion.
• Early 2026: a raise of about US$700 million reportedly valued it at about US$10 billion.
• May 2026: about US$2 billion at a US$20 billion valuation, led by Meituan's venture arm Long-Z Investments, with Tsinghua Capital, China Mobile and CPE Yuanfeng.
• July 2026: Bloomberg reported a larger-than-expected US$3.5 billion raise at about US$35 billion, with China's state-backed national AI industry investment fund among the leads.

Later reports said Moonshot had completed a final private round at an even higher valuation and was preparing a Hong Kong IPO, but the company hadn't confirmed those terms. We use the TechCrunch-confirmed US$20 billion round in our data and list the Bloomberg report separately. Earlier backers include Alibaba, Tencent, HongShan, ZhenFund, IDG Capital and 5Y Capital.

Competitive landscape

In China, Moonshot competes with DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen, ByteDance's Doubao, Zhipu AI and MiniMax, the last two of which have listed in Hong Kong. Internationally, its open models compete with those from Meta, Mistral AI and others, and its API competes with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Its advantages are strong coding and long-context performance, competitive pricing and an active developer community.

Risks

Chinese AI companies face particular risks: US export controls limit their access to the most advanced Nvidia chips, which can constrain training; international customers may be wary of using Chinese models for sensitive work; and competition in China is fierce, with price wars driving down API prices. Valuations have also risen very fast, which raises the bar for a successful IPO.

What to watch next

Watch a possible Hong Kong IPO, new Kimi model releases, ARR growth, international adoption, chip supply, and competition from DeepSeek and the large Chinese tech groups.

Key facts at a glance

Moonshot AI is a Beijing AI company founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, maker of the Kimi models and chatbot. It raised about US$2 billion at a US$20 billion valuation in May 2026, led by Meituan's Long-Z Investments, and Bloomberg later reported a US$3.5 billion raise at about US$35 billion. Its annual recurring revenue topped US$200 million in April 2026.

Why open-weight models matter

When a company releases a model's weights, developers can run, inspect and adapt it freely. That has several effects. It lowers costs for users, who can run the model on cheaper infrastructure. It builds trust and adoption among developers, who can see and modify what they're using. And it puts pressure on companies selling closed models, which must justify higher prices. Chinese companies, including Moonshot and DeepSeek, have been among the most aggressive in releasing strong open models, which has changed the competitive dynamics of the global AI market.

Tracking fast-moving valuations

Moonshot's valuation went from about US$4 billion to a reported US$35 billion within about seven months. When valuations move this quickly, different news reports often refer to different rounds, and some figures are based on unconfirmed sources. It helps to record each round's date, amount, valuation and source separately, as we do here. Our guide to tracking startup funding rounds explains the method.

Questions to ask before using a Chinese AI model

• Will you run the open weights yourself, or send data to the provider's servers?
• Which laws govern data sent to the service, and does that fit your compliance rules?
• How does performance compare on your own tasks, not just public benchmarks?

Running open weights on your own infrastructure avoids many data concerns, though you then carry the hosting cost.

Testing a few models side by side on real work is the most reliable comparison.

What this means if you're…

A developer: open Kimi models can be a cost-effective option; check licence terms and data policies for your use case.

A business outside China: consider regulatory and data-governance requirements before using Chinese AI services.

An investor: weigh rapid growth against chip constraints, competition and geopolitical risk.

Latest developments (October 2026)

Moonshot AI raised about US$2 billion in May 2026 at a valuation above US$20 billion, led by Meituan's venture arm with China Mobile and CPE, after three smaller rounds earlier in the year, according to The Standard. Bloomberg later reported talks at about US$30 billion, and one tracker lists a July round at US$35 billion that we could not confirm. Its Kimi products reportedly passed US$200 million in annual recurring revenue in April 2026.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from the public sources below. Where sources disagreed, we used the company's own announcement or a primary news report. Private-company data changes; check the date beside each figure.

1. TechCrunch
2. Bloomberg