Following Knowledge Atlas and MiniMax, the secondary market is poised to welcome its third major AI model company. According to a Bloomberg report on March 26, Moonshot AI, a general-purpose multimodal AI model developer and service provider commonly known as Kimi, is in the early stages of considering an initial public offering in Hong Kong. The company has already engaged with China International Capital Corporation and Goldman Sachs regarding the potential listing.

Notably, Kimi reportedly completed a $500 million Series C funding round at the end of 2025, followed by another financing round exceeding $700 million in February this year. The company is currently in the process of raising a new $1 billion round.

Within less than three months, Kimi has conducted three consecutive funding rounds, quadrupling its valuation from $4.3 billion to $10 billion and then to $18 billion (approximately ¥124.3 billion). This rapid growth has not only made it the fastest company to achieve "decacorn" status but also set a record for the largest consecutive funding amount among domestic AI model firms, surpassing the IPO fundraising totals of its contemporaries.

The pre-money valuation of ¥124.3 billion already exceeds the market capitalizations of Knowledge Atlas and MiniMax on their first trading days. Knowledge Atlas opened with a market cap of HK$52.827 billion (approximately ¥46.7 billion), while MiniMax debuted at HK$71.902 billion (approximately ¥63.5 billion).

As of today's market close, Knowledge Atlas holds a total market capitalization of HK$305 billion, with MiniMax at HK$309.2 billion. Both companies have seen their market values increase three to fivefold in under three months. This bullish sentiment in the secondary market may be a key factor driving Kimi's accelerated IPO plans.

Analysts suggest that pursuing both funding rounds and an IPO simultaneously indicates that Kimi's current capital activities extend beyond mere liquidity enhancement. The moves appear to be strategic preparations for market expansion and scaling operations in the next phase.

Founded by Professor Yang Zhilin, a Tsinghua University graduate and Zhiyuan Young Scientist who ranks among the top 10 most-cited Chinese scholars in NLP over the past five years (and first among those under 40), Kimi boasts co-founders Zhou Xinyu and Wu Yuxin, also Tsinghua alumni. The team has successfully attracted overseas talent from global tech leaders including Google, Meta, and Amazon.

When the AI model trend began emerging in February 2023, market rumors suggested Yang Zhilin was receiving incubation support from top-tier domestic venture capital firms. Two months later, Beijing Moonshot AI Technology Co., Ltd. was officially registered. Initially, the Tsinghua-affiliated founding team was surrounded by international talent from companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon.

Within just two months of establishment, Kimi completed its first funding round. In October 2023, the company launched its moonshot model—the first to support 200,000-character inputs—along with its smart assistant product Kimi Chat. During a communication session, Yang Zhilin confirmed the company had secured nearly ¥2 billion in investment from prominent institutions including Sequoia China, Today Capital, and Li Capital.

Throughout 2024, Knowledge Atlas completed four funding rounds, while MiniMax and Kimi each secured two rounds. Notably, Kimi's 2024 funding rounds attracted investment from Meituan Longzhu, Alibaba, and Tencent Investment, slightly later than the other two companies. Knowledge Atlas, MiniMax, and Kimi remain the only publicly confirmed AI model companies jointly invested in by Tencent, Alibaba, and Meituan.

In August 2024, Kimi reportedly completed a new $300 million funding round, achieving a post-money valuation of $3.3 billion. By the end of 2025, the company concluded a $500 million Series C round, raising its valuation to $4.3 billion. At that time, Yang Zhilin stated in an internal letter that the company held over ¥10 billion in cash reserves.

This reserve size rivals that of post-IPO Knowledge Atlas and MiniMax. As of June 2025, Knowledge Atlas held ¥2.55 billion in cash, while MiniMax reported ¥7.35 billion as of September 2025. Including net proceeds from their IPOs (approximately HK$4.173 billion for Knowledge Atlas and HK$5.293 billion for MiniMax), their cumulative cash positions reached approximately ¥6.2 billion and ¥12 billion respectively.

Since the beginning of 2026, Kimi's funding rounds and valuations have skyrocketed. During the Spring Festival period, the company secured over $700 million, reaching a $10 billion valuation. The ongoing $1 billion funding round this March has pushed its pre-money valuation to $18 billion.

Beyond Tencent, Alibaba, and Meituan, Kimi has assembled a notable investor roster including Sequoia China, Today Capital, Li Capital, BlueRun Ventures,襄禾资本,云九资本, Xiaohongshu, China Merchants China Direct Investments, 37 Interactive Entertainment, Gaorong Capital, IDG Capital, Cathay Innovation,九安医疗, and 5Y Capital.

According to Tianyancha App data, Kimi has not disclosed specific investor shareholdings. Currently, founder and CEO Yang Zhilin holds 78.968% of shares, maintaining absolute control, while Zhou Xinyu owns 10% and Wu Yuxin holds 5.957%. Additionally, Yang's Tsinghua colleague Zhang Yutao holds 5%, with Wang Zhen owning the remaining 0.075%.

The intensive funding and valuation surge correlate closely with Kimi's technological advancements. In October 2023, Yang Zhilin highlighted how limited input length constraints in existing AI models hindered technical implementation. For instance, in popular virtual character scenarios, insufficient long-text capability caused characters to forget critical information, forcing users to restart conversations frequently.

Addressing these "application difficulties caused by limited input length," Kimi achieved a breakthrough by supporting 200,000-character inputs—the world's longest at the time—ushering AI models into the long-text era. Alongside this technical debut, Yang launched the smart assistant product Kimi Chat.

By March 2024, Kimi expanded its lossless context length from 200,000 to 2 million characters, initiating beta testing that caused system crashes due to traffic surges, requiring five emergency capacity expansions. Its free ranking jumped from 436th in January 2024 to 11th by March, sparking rallies in "Kimi concept stocks."

Throughout 2025, competing products like DeepSeek, Doubao, and Yuanbao attracted user attention through aggressive promotions. By December 2025, Kimi's weekly active users fell to 4.5 million, dropping to seventh place in industry rankings.

However, Kimi staged a strong comeback through technological prowess. In late January, the company officially launched its new open-source model K2.5. As Kimi's most intelligent model to date, K2.5 achieved top scores among global open-source models in multiple Agent evaluations including HLE, BrowseComp, and DeepSearchQA.

Kimi K2.5 represents an all-in-one model based on native multimodal architecture, supporting visual and text inputs while integrating visual understanding, reasoning, programming, and Agent capabilities. Yang Zhilin stated, "We reconstructed reinforcement learning infrastructure and specifically optimized training algorithms to ensure extreme efficiency and performance."

Renowned Silicon Valley venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya dubbed this the "Kimi K2.5 moment"—marking the first time an open-source model genuinely challenged the closed-system dominance of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Historically, technological inflection points often trigger commercial explosions.

Users have returned accordingly. According to global payment giant Stripe, Kimi's individual subscription payment orders surged 8,280% month-over-month in January, with another 123.8% increase in February. On Stripe's global payment rankings, Kimi skyrocketed from beyond 100th place to ninth within two months. Domestically, Kimi.com reached its historical peak in website traffic this February.

Concurrently, the open-source AI Agent OpenClaw trend unexpectedly boosted Kimi's resurgence. In early February, OpenClaw designated Kimi K2.5 as its official primary model, triggering explosive growth for Kimi.

Beyond this, Kimi launched its cloud-based OpenClaw product Kimi Claw on February 18, enabling direct deployment within Kimi with lower usage costs and technical barriers. Rather than a standalone product, Kimi Claw operates as a cloud-hosted service based on the OpenClaw open-source framework, simplifying deployment processes.

Since late January, dual impacts from the Kimi K2.5 model and Kimi Claw's popularity have driven Kimi's cumulative revenue over 20 days to exceed its total 2025 revenue.

Regarding 2026 development goals, Yang Zhilin outlined in his late-2025 open letter ambitions for "order-of-magnitude revenue growth," focusing on Agent-related products and commercialization. Rather than pursuing absolute user numbers, the company aims to push intelligence boundaries and create greater productivity value. Whether these objectives will be realized remains to be seen over time.