TLDR:
- Chinese start-up Moonshot AI raises over US$1 billion in funding round led by Alibaba and VC HongShan.
- Moonshot AI valued at about US$2.5 billion after latest funding round.
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up Moonshot AI has secured more than US$1 billion in a recent funding round led by Alibaba Group Holding and venture capital firm HongShan. The Beijing-based company, known as Yuezhi Anmian in Chinese, was valued at approximately US$2.5 billion following this funding round. Moonshot AI launched the smart chatbot Kimi Chat in October, which utilizes its self-developed Moonshot large language model (LLM) capable of processing 200,000 Chinese characters in a context window.
The start-up, established in April 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a computer science graduate from Tsinghua University, has an LLM with over 100 billion parameters. This latest investment in Moonshot AI showcases the enduring interest in generative AI start-ups in China. The country led global investments in such firms during the first half of 2023, with a significant number of generative AI start-ups attracting funding. Moonshot AI will likely need to differentiate itself from a New York-based company of the same name, which focuses on AI platforms for e-commerce stores.
Overall, the rise of Moonshot AI and its innovative AI technologies demonstrate the continued growth and potential of the sector in China, with significant interest and investment from key players like Alibaba and HongShan.
