China’s Moonshot AI raises $2B at $20B valuation as demand for open-source AI skyrockets

<p id="speakable-summary" class="wp-block-paragraph">Chinese AI companies may not be swimming in as much cash as their Western rivals, but their open source models are still facing no shortage of interest from those who don’t mind a performance hit in exchange for cheap inference. And investors are taking notice.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://www.moonshot.ai/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Moonshot AI</a>, 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 <a href="https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzI0MTU4NjUxMg==&amp;mid=2247491521&amp;idx=1&amp;sn=48e551851edeb76a1b02e8f95c954ef0&amp;chksm=e89e48190f2f05a30359a905c4d897bdfe6ed959e839fa9bf365fdd6d42d522388594ed5a724&amp;mpshare=1&amp;scene=1&amp;srcid=05072PlZo27iGg5k3NVHBxz9&amp;sharer_shareinfo=6da495c27deccd308ded33f6b11927de&amp;sharer_shareinfo_first=6da495c27deccd308ded33f6b11927de&amp;exportkey=n_ChQIAhIQzw%2BWJhM3EmXpDLMpBP%2FUKBL0AQIE97dBBAEAAAAAAOSZCfPU7CsAAAAOpnltbLcz9gKNyK89dVj0AaosqHEsWKIWA1D26TU4gz0V6Q4zYD7uBFL13LF1WjabEVf0jtSr1q5uTpGBzpGSMS0E9LWpHUhVjg9yP1HMNvsRyrNpfyvaYcXeeYq12RaBhxZaMD6CC9yyNtRSq33xciTzQ%2BymQGMqkvJ7mGaQVXPB2TIXXStnhAyel%2BWLk%2B3IuOFiCRE6lyGDrBYIeF3NJV7by3wQqTX5PiBKQqZK8yYyV3o4CeBM7rKUJFjH2nwOv906Y%2BOX%2B%2FdPxr1DKE7Y3iG0%2BRsnx3DglxkTivQ%3D&amp;acctmode=0&amp;pass_ticket=ZloulKTDEtszZ6ZeAc3ytxZ7fbSQOiG%2Bh5yNLSWRjHZZRSUKswjndotIreQLBDxc&amp;wx_header=0#rd" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">post</a> by Huafeng Capital, which advised some investors who participated in the round.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The round was led by Chinese food delivery company Meituan’s VC arm, Long-Z Investments, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. Also participating were Tsinghua Capital, China Mobile, and CPE Yuanfeng, according to the post.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The company raised $3.9 billion over the past six months, according to Huafeng Capital. Moonshot was valued at $4.3 billion at the end of 2025, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-14/china-ai-startup-moonshot-snags-funds-at-18-billion-valuation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">per reports</a>, and by early 2026, that figure had more than doubled to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-17/china-ai-startup-moonshot-seeks-10-billion-value-in-new-funding" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">$10 billion</a> following a $700 million raise.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">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 <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/27/chinas-moonshot-releases-a-new-open-source-model-kimi-k2-5-and-a-coding-agent/">open-weight Kimi K2.5</a> 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 at the time. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The company’s latest model, Kimi K2.6, is currently the second-most used LLM on distribution platform <a href="https://openrouter.ai/rankings?view=week" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">OpenRouter</a>.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The fundraising comes as investor appetite for open-weight AI models made by Chinese labs surges. 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.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">DeepSeek, perhaps the most popular Chinese AI lab, is <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/06/deepseek-could-hit-45b-valuation-from-its-first-investment-round/">reportedly</a> in talks to raise outside capital for the first time, at a valuation of about $45 billion.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Some of Moonshot’s rivals have even gone public on the back of demand for their AI models. Zhipu AI, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/08/china-ai-tiger-goes-ipo-zhipu-hong-kong-debut-openai-knowledge-atlas-hsi-hang-seng-listing.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">which trades in Hong Kong as Knowledge Atlas Technology</a>, ended Thursday with a market cap of HK$434.7 billion (roughly $55.9 billion), while <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/09/minimax-hong-kong-ipo-ai-tigers-zhipu.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">MiniMax</a> ended the day at HK$257.3 billion ($33 billion), after both stocks rallied on new model releases.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Moonshot’s Kimi models compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude, as well as ByteDance’s Doubao, Alibaba’s Qwen, Zhipu’s Z.ai, and DeepSeek.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Moonshot’s backers include Alibaba, Tencent, HongShan (formerly known as Sequoia China), ZhenFund, IDG Capital, and 5Y Capital.</p>