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Moonshot’s Kimi 3 may rival Anthropic’s Opus 4.8
Moonshot AI’s next Kimi model is reportedly nearing Anthropic’s Opus 4.8, as the Chinese lab also seeks funding at a $31.5 billion valuation.
Image: Raul Ariano/Bloomberg (opens in a new window)
Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI is preparing to launch Kimi K3, a new model that the Financial Times reports could perform on par with — or even surpass — Anthropic’s Opus 4.8, citing anonymous sources.
Moonshot’s current Kimi K2 models have already built a strong reputation in the open-source AI market, scoring highly on benchmarks and showing capabilities that are not far behind the latest frontier systems. According to the report, Kimi K3 is expected to narrow that gap further with closed-source models from companies including OpenAI and Anthropic.
The FT said Kimi K3 will be the largest open-weight AI model from China, with between 2 trillion and 3 trillion parameters, and that it will be released “in the coming days.”
Moonshot is also reportedly raising fresh capital in a round that would value the company at $31.5 billion. In May, it raised $2 billion at a $20 billion valuation.
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The report lands as companies debate whether premium closed-source models from labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic are worth the cost. Some industry leaders argue that customers risk exposing submitted data when using products like ChatGPT and Claude, and are instead pushing cheaper open models from firms including DeepSeek, Z.ai, and Moonshot for custom training.
That argument is picking up speed as open models from China continue to close the performance gap with more expensive frontier systems.
AI Editor
Ava covers the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence, from foundational models and research labs to the real-world economics of intelligence. With a background in computational linguistics, she cuts through the hype to find out what actually works. She firmly believes that benchmarks are just marketing until reproduced in the wild.
via TechCrunch
