The next generation of Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI's Kimi model series is anticipated to match or even exceed the performance of Anthropic's Opus 4.8, according to the Financial Times, which cited anonymous sources. Moonshot's Kimi K2 models have gained positive traction in the open-source AI market, achieving high rankings on benchmarks and demonstrating capabilities that are not far behind the most advanced frontier models. The company's upcoming release, named Kimi K3, is expected to take this progress further by narrowing the gap with closed-source models from competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic. The FT reports that Kimi K3 will be the largest open-weight AI model from China, featuring between 2 trillion and 3 trillion parameters, and is set to be released "in the coming days."

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Moonshot is also reportedly raising fresh capital in a funding round that would value the company at $31.5 billion. Earlier this year, in May, the firm raised $2 billion at a $20 billion valuation. This news comes amid a renewed debate about the value of paying AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic for their expensive, closed-source models. Industry leaders are concerned that these AI labs might extract the data their clients submit when using products like ChatGPT and Claude. Executives are pitching their own products as alternatives or recommending that companies adopt cheaper open-source models—such as those developed by DeepSeek, Z.ai, or Moonshot—and customize them for their specific needs. This argument has gained momentum, especially as open models from China continue to close the performance gap with their more expensive, frontier counterparts.