Chinese artificial intelligence startup Moonshot AI is preparing for a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) that could take place within the next six months, as the company seeks to capitalise on growing investor interest following the launch of its Kimi K3 model.
According to Bloomberg, the Beijing-based company has circulated a shareholder resolution requesting approval for the proposed listing. People familiar with the matter said the company is also finalising a private funding round that could value the three-year-old firm at more than US$30 billion, although the terms have yet to be concluded.
The planned IPO comes amid strong business growth. Moonshot’s annual recurring revenue increased from US$200 million in April to US$300 million in June, strengthening the company’s confidence in its ability to attract public market investors.
Investor enthusiasm has been driven largely by the release of Kimi K3, an open-weight artificial intelligence model with 2.8 trillion parameters. Open-weight models enable developers to download and customise their underlying parameters, making them attractive for enterprise and research applications.
Moonshot said Kimi K3 performed competitively against several leading United States AI systems, although it acknowledged that the model still trails Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 in overall capability.
Independent benchmarking by Artificial Analysis ranked Kimi K3 ahead of Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 on selected frontier benchmarks, making it the first Chinese open-weight AI model to achieve that position.
As part of its listing preparations, Moonshot has begun dismantling its “red chip” corporate structure to simplify an overseas flotation. The company has also held discussions with Goldman Sachs Group and China International Capital Corporation regarding potential advisory roles for the IPO.
Moonshot declined to comment on the reported listing plans.
Founded in early 2023 by former Tsinghua University professor Yang Zhilin, Moonshot has emerged as one of China’s leading generative AI developers. It competes with rivals including DeepSeek, Alibaba’s Qwen, MiniMax and Z.AI.
The company’s product portfolio includes paid chatbot subscriptions, enterprise access to its foundation models and Kimi Work, a general-purpose AI agent. Its pricing strategy positions Kimi K3 closer to Anthropic’s Sonnet models than many competing Chinese offerings, reflecting confidence in the platform’s commercial value.
Despite its rapid growth, Moonshot remains smaller than Z.AI, which is approaching US$1 billion in annual sales. Meanwhile, DeepSeek is reportedly pursuing additional private funding while considering a potential IPO in 2027.
