Chinese artificial intelligence startup Moonshot AI has temporarily suspended new consumer subscriptions for its recently launched Kimi K3 model, citing overwhelming demand that exceeded its computing capacity. The move comes as the three-year-old company prepares for a potential initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong that could value it at over $30 billion.
Multiple sources confirmed that Moonshot is unwinding its offshore corporate structure as part of IPO preparations, with Goldman Sachs and China International Capital Corp (CICC) advising on the proposed listing. A shareholder resolution seeking approval for the offering suggests a timeline within the next six months.
The subscription freeze was announced Sunday after Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter open-weight model, generated far more user interest than anticipated. "Kimi K3 has received far more love than we expected, and our GPUs are feeling it," the company noted, adding that existing paying subscribers would retain uninterrupted access. New subscriptions will resume in stages as additional compute resources become available.
Moonshot’s annual recurring revenue reached $300 million in June, up from $200 million in April, partly driven by the model's early success. Independent benchmarks from Artificial Analysis and Arena.ai placed Kimi K3 on par with leading American models from OpenAI and Anthropic, and ahead of Anthropic’s Opus in certain coding and engineering tasks. The model is designed for agent-based and coding workloads, demanding significant inference capacity.
The AI startup, founded by former Carnegie Mellon doctoral researcher Yang Zhilin, has already raised over $5.5 billion, including a $2 billion round in May from investors like Meituan, China Mobile, and CPE. It is now seeking up to $2 billion more. The competitive pressure on peers was immediate: shares of rivals Zhipu and MiniMax fell roughly 27% and 16% in Hong Kong following the Kimi K3 announcement. Meanwhile, US export controls on advanced Nvidia chips continue to constrain computing infrastructure for Chinese AI developers.
