Moonshot AI
Chinese frontier lab behind the Kimi assistant and Kimi K3 open-weight MoE.
Moonshot AI builds the Kimi product family and releases large open-weight models. Kimi K3 (2.8T MoE, 1M context) is its flagship open multimodal agentic release under the Kimi K3 License, with API access at platform.kimi.ai and hosted access on Databricks Unity AI Gateway (2026-08-06).
Why Moonshot AI matters
Kimi K3 pushed open weights into the 3T-class MoE tier with competitive agentic coding and multimodal scores. Teams evaluating self-host frontier models need to weigh capability against the custom license’s commercial clauses.
Last reviewed: 4 September 2026
Best fit for
When architects typically choose Moonshot AI.
- Open frontier multimodal models
- Long-horizon coding agents
- 1M-context knowledge work
- Self-host + API hybrid stacks
Strengths
Qualitative snapshot for architects—not a public ranking.
- Open frontier scale★★★★★
- Agentic coding★★★★★
- Long context★★★★★
- Multimodal★★★★☆
- License simplicity★★☆☆☆
Quick facts
- Founded
- 2023
- Headquarters
- Beijing, China
- Open source
- Yes
- Enterprise
- No
- Flagship model
- Kimi K3
On DataAIHub
- 1Models
- 3Products
- 4Tools
- 1GitHub
- 1Research
- 8Guides
- 4Benchmarks
Company profile
- Founded
- 2023
- Headquarters
- Beijing, China
- Country
- China
- Open source
- Yes
- Cloud provider
- No
- Website
- https://www.moonshot.ai
- Confidence
- High
- Source coverage
- 8
Ecosystem
Competes with
Works with
Recommended for
- Large Language Models
Kimi K3 is a key open 3T-class reference in the 2026 LLM landscape.
- Llama Models
Compare open-weight licensing and deployability vs Llama stacks.
Often paired with
- Hugging Face
Kimi K3 weights and community serving recipes distribute via the Hub.
How Moonshot AI evolved
Key moments in chronological order.
- Partnership
Kimi K3 on Databricks Unity AI Gateway
Databricks hosts Kimi K3 through Foundation Model API with Unity AI Gateway governance (US hosting; AWS and GCP workspaces).
- Open source
Full checkpoint published on Hugging Face under the Kimi K3 License.
- Model
2.8T MoE multimodal agentic model ships on Kimi product and API.
- API
platform.kimi.ai
OpenAI/Anthropic-compatible API for Kimi K3 and related models.
- Founded
Moonshot AI founded
Beijing lab builds the Kimi assistant and frontier MoE models.
Products
Foundation models
Related tools
Related research
- Kimi K3 model card
Original Paper
GitHub
Related benchmarks
Related rankings
Related guides
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