A week ago, Moonshot AI's open-weight model Kimi K3 rattled markets across Asia: Taiwan's benchmark index sank more than 6%, Japanese equities dropped 4%, the Nasdaq slid 1.5%, and shares of rival Chinese labs Z.ai and MiniMax tumbled 16 to 30%. The trigger was simple — a Chinese open-weight model had matched or beaten Claude and GPT on coding benchmarks, and traders scrambled to reprice how much of a premium Western AI labs deserved.
Now Moonshot wants to turn that noise into capital. According to Bloomberg, the company has begun the process for a Hong Kong listing and is aiming to close it within roughly six months. The target: a valuation above $30 billion.
The pace of growth is striking on its own. At the end of 2024, Moonshot was valued around $4.3 billion. A new funding round — roughly $2 billion — has pushed that figure up nearly sevenfold in under two years. Backers in the round include Alibaba, Tencent, and China Mobile.
To qualify for a Hong Kong listing, Moonshot is dismantling its old offshore structure built through the Cayman Islands and rebuilding itself as a joint venture, a shift Chinese regulators increasingly require from tech firms seeking overseas listings.
Revenue tells a more modest story. Per Bloomberg, Moonshot's annual recurring revenue grew from roughly $100 million in March to $200 million in April — fast, but still two orders of magnitude below the valuation it's chasing. Founder Yang Zhilin says the company holds more than 10 billion yuan, about $1.4 billion, in cash.
Moonshot isn't alone in eyeing the exit: DeepSeek is reportedly weighing an IPO of its own after closing its first external funding round. The open question isn't whether Kimi K3 can shake markets again — it already has. It's whether investors will pay $30 billion for a company generating $200 million a year.
