$50 Billion AI Upstart Moonshot Seeks $3B IPO, US Cloud Ties
Moonshot AI has confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong, which could raise about $3 billion, according to Reuters. The company is valued at $50 billion following a recent funding round and has already raised over $5.5 billion since 2023.
Moonshot is in talks with major U.S. cloud providers, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud, over revenue-sharing agreements for its Kimi K3 model. The company seeks to secure as much as 30% of the revenue generated by K3 on these platforms.
Kimi K3 has a massive 2.8 trillion parameters, making it the world's largest open-weight model, according to Moonshot. However, this size also makes it expensive to run, which is why demand for access to U.S. cloud infrastructure could be crucial for Moonshot.
Moonshot faces scrutiny in Washington, with U.S. officials accusing the company of using restricted Nvidia chips and distilling capabilities from Anthropic models. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has hinted that Moonshot may be added to a U.S. trade blacklist.