Moonshot AI Targets Hong Kong IPO Following Kimi K3 Launch

Moonshot AI aims to go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange within the next six months, insiders reveal. The Beijing-based company behind the Kimi chatbot has circulated a shareholder resolution seeking approval for the offering.

The move comes after Moonshot's recent launch of its Kimi K3 AI model, which briefly unsettled global technology markets. Released on July 16, Kimi K3 is an open-weight model featuring approximately 2.8 trillion parameters and uses a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture to divide tasks among specialized sub-networks.

Its one-million token context window enabled it to perform on par with several top US AI models in coding benchmarks. The new model incorporates innovations like Kimi Delta Attention for decoding that is up to 6.3 times faster in million-token contexts and Attention Residuals which improve training efficiency by about 25% with minimal additional cost.

The debut stirred notable market reactions. Taiwan’s main stock index dropped over 6%, Japanese equities declined by 4%, and the Nasdaq fell 1.5%, marking its worst day that week, according to Fortune. Hong Kong-listed competitors also suffered; Z.ai lost up to 30% of its value, marking its steepest single-day decline since January, while shares of MiniMax Group and Alibaba fell 16% and 4% respectively, Bloomberg reported.

Valuation and Funding

Moonshot is in the process of closing a funding round that could push its valuation past $30 billion, a substantial increase from the $4.3 billion it was valued at in December, according to MLQ News. The company's annual recurring revenue reportedly doubled to around $200 million by April, up from $100 million in early March. This rapid growth has attracted investor interest despite Beijing’s restrictions on Chinese AI firms receiving foreign investment without regulatory approval.

Preparing for the Hong Kong Listing

To meet Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing requirements, Moonshot is restructuring by dismantling its offshore Variable Interest Entity (VIE) setup, which Chinese companies have used to bypass ownership limits on foreign investment. The company plans to replace this with a joint venture model aligned with guidance from China’s securities regulator favoring mainland-linked structures.

Moonshot is not alone in planning a public offering: rival DeepSeek is also considering an IPO after securing initial external funding. Market reactions to AI developments continue to influence traditional financial assets, similar to the selloff in June that pushed Bitcoin towards $62,000.

Wall Street remains divided on how to value AI competition, with JPMorgan recommending buying dips in AI chip stocks, while Morgan Stanley prefers investing in hyperscalers.