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China's Moonshot AI raised more-than-expected US$3.5 billion (HK$27.3 billion) in its latest funding round, sending its valuation to US$35 billion, as its stellar Kimi K3 artificial intelligence model hit the global AI market, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
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Initially, the AI startup targeted to secure US$1 billion to US$2 billion in this financing round, according to the report, citing people familiar with the matter.
Moonshot AI is now planning a new round of funding and has begun approaching potential investors, aiming for a pre-money valuation of US$50 billion.
The company expects to complete the final round of financing before kicking off its Hong Kong initial public offering as early as this year.
The Beijing-based startup is actively pursuing financing deals, underscoring strong investor interest after unveiling Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter model that delivers performance approaching that of US AI giants like Anthropic and OpenAI.
It has also released this world's largest open-weight AI system available for free download, fine-tuning, and self-deployment this week.
The launch of Kimi K3 - described as another "DeepSeek moment" - drove a selloff in tech stocks globally, reflecting that the country remains competitive with US rivals despite facing technology export bans and computing constraints.
However, the Trump administration has accused Moonshot AI of stealing from Anthropic's AI large language model, Fable, to help create its latest K3 model and has acquired advanced Nvidia AI chips.
