Moonshot AI was founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a former Meta AI and Google Brain researcher. The lab gained prominence with its open-weight Kimi models—Kimi K2.5 notably drove rapid adoption and Kimi K2.6 became one of the most-used LLMs on the OpenRouter distribution platform. Moonshot competes with models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, ByteDance, Alibaba, Zhipu and other Chinese AI labs. The company reported annual recurring revenue exceeding $200 million in April, fueled by paid subscriptions and API usage. Moonshot attracted significant investor support prior to this round, having raised about $3.9 billion over the prior six months and counting backers such as Alibaba, Tencent, HongShan, ZhenFund, IDG Capital and 5Y Capital. Its valuation progressed from about $4.3 billion at the end of 2025 to roughly $10 billion in early 2026 before the current $20 billion valuation.

Total raised

$8.0B

Funding rounds

6

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Jul 2026