By Laurie Chen, Kane Wu and Yantoultra Ngui
HONG KONG, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Beijing-based startup Moonshot has confidentially filed for a Hong Kong initial public offering, said three people with knowledge of the plans, in what is likely to be one of the most anticipated near-term listings by a Chinese AI company.
The developer of the Kimi large language model is aiming to raise $3 billion, one of the people said.
Moonshot’s latest version, Kimi K3 released in July, has met with positive reviews and robust demand, and sources have said the startup is in talks with Microsoft, Amazon and Google on revenue-sharing agreements that would allow the U.S. cloud companies to host the model.
Any deal could mark the first big revenue-sharing pact between a Chinese AI firm and a major U.S. cloud company.
Moonshot has been valued at $50 billion in an ongoing funding round, two separate sources said.
That puts it somewhat lower than other major domestic rivals such as DeepSeek, which sources have said is valued at roughly $74 billion, and Z.AI, which has a market capitalisation of $66 billion.
The timetable for the IPO is subject to regulatory approvals, and financial details, including proceeds sought, could change depending on market conditions, the sources said.
Moonshot did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
All sources for this article were not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified.
SCRUTINY IN THE WEST, MAJOR CHINESE BACKERS
An IPO from Moonshot adds to a hectic pace of fundraising by AI companies globally. Claude developer Anthropic is planning to launch an offering in the coming days and complete its listing by October. Among Chinese firms, Z.AI, formerly known as Zhipu, and MiniMax listed in Hong Kong this year.
Moonshot says while Kimi K3’s 2.8-trillion parameters make it the world’s largest open-weight model and it has drawn strong demand, it has also strained the startup’s computing capacity.
The startup was founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, an AI researcher who pursued doctoral studies at Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University.
The company has also drawn scrutiny from senior U.S. officials over allegations that it used restricted Nvidia chips and distilled capabilities from Anthropic’s models. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said he might add it to a trade blacklist.
Moonshot has disputed claims that K3’s performance was achieved through distillation.
To gain regulatory approval, Moonshot has had to unwind its offshore incorporation structure, or the so-called red-chip structure, and change it to an onshore China domicile before the IPO filing, said two sources familiar with the matter.
Moonshot investors include Alibaba, Tencent, IDG Capital and HSG, formerly Sequoia Capital China.
It also raised more than $2 billion in May from investors including Meituan, China Mobile and Chinese private equity firm CPE, according to a fundraising document seen by Reuters, bringing the company’s total fundraising to date to more than $5.5 billion.
For the IPO, the company is working with banks including Goldman Sachs, CICC and Deutsche Bank.
CICC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Goldman and Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Funds raised via Hong Kong listings totalled $41.2 billion as of mid-August, up 142% year-on-year, with Chinese technology companies accounting for most of that, LSEG data shows.
Chinese tech-focused publication LatePost first reported Moonshot’s confidential IPO filing on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen in Beijing, Kane Wu and Yantoultra Ngui in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Eduardo Baptista in Beijing; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Edwina Gibbs)
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