- Moonshot is seeking to raise up to $1 billion in an expanded funding round, which would value it at about $18 billion, Bloomberg reported.
- Just last month, Moonshot's valuation surpassed the $10 billion mark.
Moonshot is seeking to raise as much as $1 billion in an expanded funding round that would bring the startup's valuation to about $18 billion, Bloomberg reported on Saturday.
It has more than quadrupled its valuation in just three months, underscoring growing interest in Chinese AI developers racing to rival Silicon Valley leaders.
The startup behind the Kimi chatbot has officially kicked off preliminary discussions for the latest funding round, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Last month, local media China Star Market reported that Moonshot's new funding round of over $700 million was nearing completion, just over a month after its previous $500 million round.
The round was co-led by existing shareholders including Alibaba, Tencent, 5Y Capital, and Andon Health, pushing Moonshot's valuation past the $10 billion mark. This doubled its $4.3 billion valuation from the previous round, according to the February 17 report by China Star Market.
Meanwhile, a new funding round at a valuation of $10 billion to $12 billion had also been initiated, China Star Market noted.
Moonshot's remarkable fundraising speed reflects growing global investor appetite and strong interest in a group of Chinese startups.
These startups are fiercely competing with industry giants like OpenAI and Anthropic to develop world-class AI services.
Moonshot was founded by former Tsinghua University professor Yang Zhilin, who previously worked on key AI projects at Meta Platforms and Google.
The startup sells tiered subscription plans for its chatbot and offers its underlying core AI technology support and services to enterprise clients.
Yang disclosed in an internal letter at the end of 2025 that the company's cash reserves had exceeded 10 billion yuan, and it is in no rush to go public in the short term.
In the Hong Kong stock market, rivals Zhipu and MiniMax have recently traded at valuations between $30 billion and $40 billion.
Notably, MiniMax's market capitalization at one point even surpassed the total market value of Chinese internet incumbent Baidu.
Despite its technological advancements, Moonshot still trails peers like Zhipu and MiniMax in commercialization.
Part of this market frenzy was ignited by the breakout success of the open-source agent OpenClaw.
This phenomenon has prompted China's top cloud providers and AI upstarts to launch their own versions for seamless technology adoption.
Moonshot was among the first to capitalize on this trend, quickly rolling out its Kimi Claw product powered by its latest K2.5 model.
