Moonshot AI Prepares Powerful Open-Source Model Kimi K3 to Rival Anthropic's Opus 4.8
Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI is set to release its new open-source model Kimi K3, which is expected to match or surpass Anthropic's closed-source Opus 4.8 in performance and become the largest open-weight AI model from China.
Chinese artificial intelligence lab Moonshot AI plans to release its latest open-source model, Kimi K3, in the coming days. According to sources cited by the Financial Times, the model is expected to perform on par with or even surpass Anthropic's closed-source Opus 4.8.
The company's previous Kimi K2 models have been well received in the open-source community, ranking high on benchmarks and showing capabilities close to leading frontier models. The upcoming Kimi K3 aims to further close the gap, competing with models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Kimi K3 will be the largest open-weight model ever created in China, with a parameter count between 2 trillion and 3 trillion. Its release comes amid a growing debate in the industry about the value of paying for expensive closed-source AI models like ChatGPT and Claude. Business leaders fear that AI labs might use client-submitted data for their products, prompting many to consider cheaper open-source alternatives such as those developed by DeepSeek, Z.ai, or Moonshot.
At the same time, Moonshot AI is raising fresh capital in a round that would value the company at $31.5 billion. In May, the company raised $2 billion at a $20 billion valuation.
