EN

Moonshot AI: the company behind Kimi and its open models

Moonshot AI is a Chinese startup founded in Beijing in 2023, best known for the Kimi assistant and the Kimi K family of models. It releases its flagship models as open weights, which is why developers around the world keep a close eye on it.

Data as of October 22, 2026

Key figures

CountryChina
HeadquartersBeijing
Founded2023
TypeStart-up
Weights policyOpen weights
Model familiesKimi K, Kimi-VL, Moonlight
Consumer assistantKimi
Official sitemoonshot.ai · Developer API
Models tracked here6
Best ranking position#19

A young startup with a lunar name

Moonshot AI was founded in 2023 and is based in Beijing’s Haidian district, the city’s university and tech hub. Its stated goal fits in one line: finding the best possible conversion of energy into intelligence. The company says it is working toward artificial general intelligence while sharing its research with the open-source community.

Its most visible product is the Kimi assistant, available on the web, on mobile, on desktop and as a Chrome extension. It includes an agent mode, deep research, and tools to produce slide decks and spreadsheets.

Kimi K models: a bet on agents

The Kimi K family is the company’s technical core. The K2 and then K3 generations target long-horizon coding, everyday knowledge work (code, analysis, spreadsheets, slides) and reasoning. Recent versions are multimodal, meaning they understand both text and images. Moonshot has also released smaller models, such as Kimi-VL for vision and Moonlight, a compact mixture-of-experts model.

Open weights, with a license worth reading

Moonshot publishes its flagship models as open weights on Hugging Face. The license used for the K2 series is a modified MIT: commercial use is allowed, but with clauses added on top of the original MIT terms. In practice, a developer can download the model, adapt it and host it themselves as long as they respect those clauses. The largest models need serious hardware, though, so many users simply go through the API.

How to access the models

  • In the Kimi assistant, with zero setup, for personal use.
  • Through the API on the Kimi platform, which offers the flagship model, a coding-focused variant and built-in tools (web search, code execution, file analysis).
  • As a download, for self-hosting.

Moonshot stands out for this dual approach: a feature-rich consumer assistant alongside top-tier open models. To compare it with other players, browse our list of AI labs or read the profile of Zhipu AI, another Chinese lab betting on open weights.

Moonshot AI models tracked on this site

ModelsReleasedCapability indexPrice (input / output)
Kimi K3July 16, 202680.7$3 / $15
Kimi K2.7 CodeJune 12, 202666.7$0.95 / $4
Kimi K2.6April 20, 202684.4$0.95 / $4
Kimi K2.5January 27, 202678.1$0.58 / $3
Kimi K2 ThinkingNovember 6, 202569.6$0.60 / $2.5
Kimi K2 0905September 5, 2025—$0.60 / $2.5

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Kimi and Moonshot AI?

Moonshot AI is the company; Kimi is both the name of its consumer assistant and of its language models (Kimi K2, Kimi K3 and so on). The same name covers the app and the engine that powers it.

What license do Kimi models use?

Kimi K2.x models are published on Hugging Face under a modified MIT license. It allows commercial use but adds conditions compared with the standard MIT license, so read each model's license file before deploying it.

How do I use Moonshot models in my own app?

Through the Kimi API platform (platform.kimi.ai), which replaced the older platform.moonshot.ai address. The platform also offers built-in tools such as web search and code execution.

Where is Moonshot AI based?

Moonshot AI is headquartered in Beijing, in the Haidian district. It is a Chinese company, which may matter for your compliance and data-hosting decisions.

Data sources

Data as of October 22, 2026

Report an error

Does a figure, a date or a fact look wrong? Tell us: every report is checked.