- Moonshot is poised to close a new $2 billion funding round, pushing its latest valuation past $20 billion.
- The company's annual recurring revenue surpassed $200 million in April.
Chinese AI (artificial intelligence) startup Moonshot is on the verge of completing a new $2 billion funding round, a deal that will push the Kimi maker's valuation past $20 billion.
The round is led by Meituan Dragonball, with participation from China Mobile and CITIC Private Equity Funds Management (CPE). Meituan Dragonball alone invested over $200 million, local media outlet LatePost reported on Wednesday.
The deal underscores the growing appetite of global investors for Chinese AI developers. In less than six months, Moonshot's valuation has more than quadrupled from about $4.3 billion last November.
Between January and February this year, the company closed three funding rounds totaling $1.9 billion. Including the latest injection, Moonshot has raised over $3.9 billion in the past half-year.
The surging valuation is accompanied by strong financial growth. Following the update of its K2.5 model, the company's annual recurring revenue (ARR) topped $100 million in early March.
This revenue metric accelerated further in April, successfully breaching the $200 million mark, driven by a significant increase in paid subscriptions and enterprise API calls, according to LatePost.
To secure priority access to computing resources, some enterprise clients have even offered upfront guarantees in the tens of millions of dollars.
Ahead of the new funding, the company released and open-sourced its latest K2.6 model in April, which features enhanced coding capabilities and supports the collaboration of up to 300 sub-agents.
Founded by former Tsinghua University professor Yang Zhilin, Moonshot is currently locked in fierce competition with numerous industry giants, while rivals Zhipu and MiniMax have already gone public in Hong Kong.
As of May 6, MiniMax's market capitalization stood at about HK$251.7 billion ($32 billion), while Zhipu's market value was around HK$414 billion.
Despite its commercial success, the firm faces considerable pressure to retain talent. Due to its outstanding performance in the coding domain, its core employees have become prime poaching targets for competitors.
To cope with the intense industry rivalry, Moonshot plans to significantly boost employee stock option incentives this year, attempting to retain top AI researchers through lucrative financial rewards, the report said.
($1 = HKD 7.8362)
