Meet Kimi K3, the newest Chinese AI model haunting Silicon Valley

By Christine Ji and Hannah Pedone

Moonshot AI's new open model is catching up to Anthropic and OpenAI, raising questions about the future of the AI race

Kimi K3's performance shows that Chinese AI capabilities could be catching up to those of U.S. frontier labs.

A new Chinese AI model is causing a stir, having landed in the top spot of Arena's Frontend Code leaderboard and hinting that the capability gap between the U.S. and China could be closing faster than expected.

The model, called Kimi K3 and developed by Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI, is the world's largest open model with 2.8 trillion parameters, according to the AI lab. The model weights will be made available by July 27, Moonshot shared in a blog post. That means "anyone, anywhere, can download it and build on top of it for free," Mark Malek, CIO of Siebert Financial told MarketWatch. Early comparisons put Kimi K3 "right in the conversation" with top U.S. closed models, Malek said.