Moonshot AI hits $50 billion valuation, eyes Hong Kong IPO in early 2027
The Beijing startup behind the Kimi models has stacked funding rounds at a rapid clip and is now lining up a public listing
Moonshot AI has completed a funding round that values the Beijing-based startup at $50 billion, according to Bloomberg. The company plans to go public in Hong Kong in early 2027.
A valuation that keeps changing shape
The company was valued at around $4.3 billion at the end of 2025. By May 2026, it had raised more than $2 billion at a $20 billion valuation. In July 2026, it pulled in $3.5 billion at a $35 billion post-money valuation. Now it sits at $50 billion.
Total capital raised now exceeds $5.5 billion. Backers include Alibaba, Tencent, and China Mobile.
The IPO plan and the model behind it
Moonshot has confidentially filed for a Hong Kong listing that aims to raise about $3 billion. Goldman Sachs, CICC, and Deutsche Bank are among the underwriters supporting the offering. Bloomberg points to early 2027 for the listing, though the window could open as early as late 2026.
The engine behind the hype is Kimi, the company’s family of large language models. Its flagship, Kimi K3, launched in July 2026 with 2.8 trillion parameters and a 1-million-token context window, making it the largest open-weight model in the world. Open-weight means developers can download and run the model themselves, rather than only renting access through an API.
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Moonshot’s annualized recurring revenue reached approximately $300 million by June 2026, up from roughly $200 million in April. The current valuation stands at more than 160 times annualized revenue.
Background: who is running this thing
Moonshot was founded by Yang Zhilin, a former Tsinghua professor and Google researcher.
Moonshot is not alone at the top of that market. DeepSeek is valued at around $74 billion, and Z.AI at roughly $66 billion.
What this means
The reception to Kimi K3 has reportedly prompted preliminary talks with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google about potential revenue-sharing arrangements. That would mark the first time a Chinese AI firm has held such discussions with major US cloud providers.