Why China’s internet is obsessed with Moonshot’s viral new Kimi model

The release of Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 has generated significant buzz across Chinese social media. On Thursday, the Chinese startup launched the open-weight model, promoting its capability to align with dominant framework from OpenAI and Anthropic at discounted rates.

Moonshot AI temporarily halted new subscriptions, citing unprecedented demand that pushed its processing power to the limit.

Kimi K3 has become the most prominent Chinese AI model to spark discussion about China’s emergence as a strong contender in the global AI race.

In light of the recent launch of Kimi K3, a vigorous debate has emerged over whether open-weight models could compete with proprietary systems from US companies.

At present, the key question is how China will meet the rising demand for computing power. Moonshot AI underlined that Kimi K3 converts computing power into AI capabilities more effectively than its predecessor.

“Put simply, the more capable AI becomes, the greater its appetite for computing power. This race to build more powerful AI hardware isn't slowing down anytime soon,” a user from Shandong, a province south of Beijing, said.

“Competition among AI software is likely to shift from focusing purely on performance to balancing both performance and token usage. In other words, it'll become a competition over value for money. It doesn't matter how powerful your model is if it uses too many tokens. And it doesn't matter how good it is if the monthly subscription is too expensive,” another user from Jiangsu, a coastal province north of Shanghai, added.

Meanwhile several featured posts on Weibo theorized that while more cost-effective models may reduce the expenses of individual tasks, they also drive broader implementation. 

The exchange of arguments between Moonshot AI and Elon Musk has also dominated key discussions on Weibo where hashtags such as #Kimi responded to Musk’s challenge. Musk’s challenge primarily topped the platform’s trending list after Musk asserted his new model could outpace Kimi.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on X on Saturday that initial training for xAI’s next generation Grok 4.6 model has entered its final stages. In addition, the 2-trillion-parameter model might be able to surpass Kimi while retaining the same speed and efficiency associated with Grok 4.5.