Moonshot AI hits $35B valuation on $3.5B raise, eyes $50B ahead of IPO
What's the deal? China's Moonshot AI has raised $3.5 billion, securing a $35 billion valuation in a just-closed round. The Beijing-based startup pulled in far more than the $1 billion to $2 billion it initially targeted, people familiar with the matter said.
Who's backing it? The National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment FundDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — a state vehicle that also backs DeepSeek — was among the lead investors. Existing backers include Meituan, Tencent, IDG Capital, and China MobileDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
Why now? The raise rides momentum from Moonshot's Kimi K3 model, which this month vaulted the firm to the front of the industry. Its debut triggered a selloff in tech stocks and was hailed as another "DeepSeek moment."
What's the endgame? Moonshot is already courting backers for a new round at a $50 billion pre-money valuation. It aims to raise capital one final time before an initial public offering in Hong Kong, possibly this year.
The product: K3 was built with 2.8 trillion parameters, making it the world's largest open-weight model, and carries a 1 million-token context window. Moonshot released its weights, letting developers download, tweak, and host the technology freely — a move that saw K3 approach the performance of frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI.
By the numbers: Moonshot hit $300 million in annual recurring revenue in June, up from $200 million in April. It previously raised at a valuation above $20 billion in a Meituan-led round in May 2026.
The signal: Moonshot's frenetic deal-making reflects intense investor appetite for Chinese open-weight AI. With state money leading and an IPO in sight, the company is positioning itself as a serious challenger to US frontier labs.
Read more: The Edge Malaysia · Bloomberg
Image credit: Ch'enMeng
