Moonshot AI, the Beijing startup behind the Kimi chatbot, has raised $3.5 billion in its latest funding round, pushing its valuation toward $30 billion. The company has attracted massive investment as China’s AI scene heats up.
The biggest chunk of this haul came in May 2026, when Moonshot closed a $2 billion Series D led by Meituan’s venture capital arm. At that point, the company’s valuation reached $20 billion, a staggering jump from just $300 million at its 2023 inception.
Investors like Alibaba, Tencent, HongShan, IDG Capital, and Gaorong Capital back Moonshot. Talks are ongoing to raise the valuation even further, aiming beyond $30 billion in upcoming rounds.
Moonshot’s flagship product, the Kimi chatbot, recently upgraded to the Kimi K3 model, has a record-breaking context window of up to one million tokens. To put that in perspective, the average novel contains about 130,000 tokens. Kimi K3 can process the equivalent of several books in a single conversation, a leap forward in memory capacity for AI chatbots.
Founder Yang Zhilin brings experience from Meta AI and Google Brain, which reflects in the company’s rapid rise. Moonshot is preparing for a potential IPO in Hong Kong, a move that could set a new valuation benchmark for AI firms in Asia and influence investor sentiment across the region.
This information is for educational purposes and not investment advice.
