Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI has reportedly filed confidentially for an initial public offering in Hong Kong, potentially setting up one of the city's most closely watched technology listings and one of the largest Chinese AI IPOs in recent years.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Moonshot submitted its application to the Hong Kong stock exchange. The Beijing-based company was valued at about US$50 billion in its latest private funding round.
Reuters, citing three people familiar with the plans, reported that Moonshot is seeking to raise as much as US$3 billion through the offering. The sources cautioned that the timetable and financial details remain subject to regulatory approval and market conditions.
The potential listing comes after Moonshot's latest large language model, Kimi K3, launched in July and drew strong demand. The company is reportedly in talks with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google over revenue-sharing arrangements that would allow the US cloud providers to host K3. Moonshot has said the model's 2.8 trillion parameters make it the world's largest open-weight model, while acknowledging that demand has strained its computing capacity.
Moonshot has also attracted scrutiny in the US over allegations that it used restricted Nvidia chips and model distillation techniques. The company has rejected claims that K3's performance was achieved through distillation.
The IPO would add to a growing wave of Chinese AI listings in Hong Kong. Z.AI and MiniMax completed Hong Kong IPOs in January, while DeepSeek is pursuing a Shanghai listing.
Founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, Moonshot counts Alibaba, Tencent, HSG, and other major Chinese investors among its backers. The company has reportedly raised more than US$5.5 billion to date, including more than US$2 billion in May.
Article edited by Ysi Chen
