Short answer: Moonshot AI is an AI company from Beijing that makes the assistant Kimi. It was founded in spring 2023. The company publishes some of its models openly, so you can also run them yourself.
The company
- Founded in March 2023 in Beijing by Yang Zhilin, who earned his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. He is the CEO.
- The name. The Chinese name means "the dark side of the moon". Yang said in 2023 that the company officially started on 1 March, exactly fifty years after Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon.
- Office in Beijing's Haidian district, according to its own site.
Kimi
Kimi is Moonshot's AI assistant, with a website (kimi.com) and apps. The first version, Kimi Chat, came out in October 2023. It stood out because it could handle very long texts in one go.
Moonshot publishes the weights of some Kimi models on Hugging Face and GitHub, under its own licence. That means companies and researchers can run those models themselves. Read more in Local AI models. Bear in mind that the largest models are huge: according to Moonshot, Kimi K3 has 2.8 trillion parameters. You will not run that on an ordinary computer.
What should you watch out for?
Moonshot is a Chinese company. If you use the Kimi app or website, your data goes to that provider. Check the terms and privacy policy for where and how your data is processed, and do not put personal data in unless that is properly arranged. If you run an open model on your own hardware, your data stays in your own environment. Read the licence before you use it for business.
As of October 2026. Company details and models change fast; check the current situation at the source.
Sources
- Moonshot AI: About
- China Daily: Homegrown chatbot throws hat in AI ring (22 March 2024)
- Jiqizhixin (via Tencent News): interview with Yang Zhilin (14 August 2023, Chinese)
- Moonshot AI on Hugging Face
- Hugging Face: Kimi K3 model card
- Kimi: Public Notice of Algorithm and Model Filing Information
Accessed 21 October 2026.