Moonshot AI Raises $500M at $4.3B Valuation in Series C
Beijing-based artificial intelligence developer Moonshot AI has completed a $500 million Series C funding round that values the company at $4.3 billion, positioning it among China’s leading AI model makers. IDG Capital led the investment with $150 million, while existing shareholders Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings participated in the round.
The substantial capital injection brings Moonshot AI’s cash reserves to more than $1.4 billion, providing the financial runway to expand its computing infrastructure and development capabilities. Founder and CEO Yang Zhilin indicated the company has no immediate plans to pursue a public listing, contrasting with domestic competitors who are actively preparing for initial public offerings.
Two of Moonshot AI’s main rivals have announced plans to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Z.ai filed paperwork seeking to raise $560 million, while MiniMax reportedly aims to secure more than $600 million through its offering. Both IPOs are expected to launch this month.
Moonshot AI has gained prominence through its Kimi AI models, particularly the Kimi K2 Thinking system launched in November. The model operates as a thinking agent with 1 trillion parameters, capable of reasoning through problems step by step and executing between 200 and 300 sequential tool calls without human supervision. The system demonstrated superior performance compared to OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 on multiple AI benchmarks.
The launch of Kimi K2 Thinking has driven significant commercial growth for Moonshot AI. The company’s application programming interface revenue in overseas markets increased fourfold between September and November. During the same period, the number of global paying users grew 170 percent month on month.
A report from the US Department of Commerce’s Centre for AI Standards and Innovation earlier identified Moonshot AI as evidence of the growing sophistication of China’s artificial intelligence sector. The company joins other Chinese developers working on open-weight large language models that aim to compete with American AI leaders.
