China's Moonshot AI raises $2B at $20B valuation as demand for open source AI skyrockets | TechCrunch
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China's Moonshot AI raises $2B at $20B valuation as demand for open source AI skyrockets | TechCrunch
"Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based AI lab developing the popular Kimi series of open-weight large language models, has raised about $2 billion at a valuation of $20 billion, according to a post by Huafeng Capital, which advised some investors who participated in the round. The round was led by Chinese food delivery company Meituan's VC arm, Long-Z Investment."
"Moonshot was valued at $4.3 billion at the end of 2025, per reports, and by early 2026, that figure had more than doubled to $10 billion following a $700 million raise. The company raised $3.9 billion over the past six months, according to Huafeng Capital."
"Moonshot AI was founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a former Meta AI and Google Brain researcher, and quickly became one of China's most popular AI labs after its open-weight Kimi K2.5 large language model took the coding world by storm earlier this year, nearly topping benchmarks and posting performance figures close to that of Open AI and Anthropic's models."
"Moonshot's annual recurring revenue topped $200 million in April, driven by rapid growth in paid subscriptions and API usage, per the financial advisor's post. The fundraising comes as investor appetite for open-weight AI models made by Chinese labs surges."
Moonshot AI, a Beijing-based AI lab founded in 2023 by former Meta and Google Brain researcher Yang Zhilin, has secured $2 billion in funding at a $20 billion valuation. The round was led by Meituan's VC arm Long-Z Investment, with participation from Tsinghua Capital, China Mobile, and CPE Yuanfeng. The company raised $3.9 billion over six months, with valuations climbing from $4.3 billion at end-2025 to $10 billion by early 2026. Moonshot's Kimi K2.5 model gained popularity for strong coding performance, while its latest Kimi K2.6 ranks as the second-most used LLM on OpenRouter. The company achieved $200 million annual recurring revenue by April, reflecting growing demand for affordable open-weight Chinese AI models.
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