The Chinese company Moonshot AI concluded its latest private funding round with a valuation of around US$ 50 billion and is preparing an initial public offering in Hong Kong for the first quarter of 2027, according to people familiar with the plans who spoke to Bloomberg.
The developer of Kimi has also begun preparing preliminary meetings with investors, which may take place as early as October. The company is considering raising up to US$ 5 billion in the deal, although the final size and timeline may still change.
The new valuation represents a significant acceleration within a few months. In July, Moonshot had closed a round of US$ 3.5 billion that valued the company at US$ 35 billion. The valuation of approximately US$ 50 billion implies an increase of about 43% since then.
Preparation for the stock exchange listing was already moving forward. In September, Reuters reported that Moonshot had confidentially filed its IPO application in Hong Kong and initially intended to raise about US$ 3 billion. Goldman Sachs, CICC and Deutsche Bank were among the institutions involved in the deal.
Kimi K3 drives Moonshot's expansion
Part of the valuation increase occurred after the launch of Kimi K3, introduced in July. The model has 2.8 trillion parameters, a multimodal architecture and a context of up to 1 million tokens, according to Moonshot itself.
Demand for K3 even put pressure on the company's computing capacity. Reuters reported in July that Moonshot had to temporarily halt new subscriptions to the service amid the demand. In September, the agency also reported that the company was negotiating possible revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft, Amazon and Google to host the model.
Moonshot, founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, has already raised more than US$ 5.5 billion and has among its investors Alibaba, Tencent, IDG Capital and HSG. The company also had to reorganize its corporate structure into an entity domiciled in China before the listing application in Hong Kong.
The next step will be to directly test demand from public investors. If the currently discussed schedule is maintained, preliminary talks begin this month and the debut will take place between January and March 2027. The transaction remains subject to regulatory approvals and market conditions.
