At the end of 2025, a company-wide letter from Yang Zhilin, founder and CEO of Moon's Dark Side (Kimi), seemed to provide a perfect year-end summary for the company. He stated, "The amounts raised in our Series B and C funding rounds already exceed the fundraising of most IPOs and private placements by listed companies, so we are in no hurry to go public in the short term." The letter not only confirmed the previously rumored $500 million Series C funding but also disclosed that the company's cash reserves on its books exceeded 10 billion yuan, with a clear stance of "not rushing to go public." Around the same time, fellow "AI Six Tigers" members Knowledge Atlas (02513.HK) and MINIMAX-WP (00100.HK) successively passed hearings with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, setting their official listing dates for January 8 and January 9, 2026, respectively. This statement made Moon's Dark Side stand out as distinctly different among domestic large language model startups.

With over ten billion yuan in funding and "no rush to go public," Moon's Dark Side indeed has its reasons for confidence. Founded in April 2023, Moon's Dark Side never seemed short of funding. According to Qichacha App data, merely two months after its establishment, the company completed a super angel funding round exceeding $200 million, with participation from institutions like Sequoia Capital China, ZhenFund, Monolith Capital, and Today Capital, catapulting its post-money valuation directly to $300 million and setting a record for angel-round funding of AI startups at the time. Subsequently, in July 2023, the company secured a Pre-A round involving Meituan's (03690.HK) Longzhu Capital and Xianghe Capital, among others. Although the exact amount was not fully disclosed, subsequent funding progress suggests this round further solidified its initial capital base.

The year 2024 became a breakout year for Moon's Dark Side's fundraising. In February of that year, the company completed a Series A+ round raising over $1 billion, with its valuation soaring to $2.5 billion. Alibaba (09988.HK, hereinafter "Alibaba") entered as the lead investor, with Sequoia Capital China, Xiaohongshu, and Meituan participating as co-investors. Notably, according to a Financial Times report, nearly half of Alibaba's $800 million investment was provided in the form of "cloud credits," meaning the actual cash received might be lower than the announced figure. Later, in August, the Series B round was finalized. As reported by Securities Times, this round raised over $300 million, further pushing the valuation to $3.3 billion, with Tencent (00700.HK) and Gaorong Capital joining the shareholder roster.

By the end of 2024, public criticism from Neil Shen, Managing Director of GSR Ventures, revealed equity disputes behind Moon's Dark Side's founding. Coupled with the subsequent arrival of the "DeepSeek moment," the company's fundraising pace slowed. It wasn't until mid-2025, after Moon's Dark Side launched its Kimi K2 model, that funding news emerged in October, culminating in the official closing of a $500 million Series C round in December, which was significantly oversubscribed, driving the valuation up to $4.3 billion. IDG Capital acted as the lead investor, with existing shareholders like Tencent and Alibaba continuing to participate; Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen also invested personally, reportedly having cumulatively invested $70 million to date. Summarizing its complete funding history and excluding the partially undisclosed Pre-A round amount, the total verifiable funding raised slightly exceeds $2 billion (approximately 14.3 billion yuan converted at the 2025 average exchange rate of 7.14). Combined with the minimum 10 billion yuan cash reserve disclosed in Yang Zhilin's internal letter, and excluding other factors, a simple calculation suggests that from its founding in April 2023 to the end of 2025, Moon's Dark Side's cumulative minimum cash burn was approximately 4.3 billion yuan. Based on an operating period of about 2.7 years, its minimum average annual burn rate was roughly 1.6 billion yuan.

This expenditure includes the significant marketing costs from the large-scale user acquisition campaign for Kimi in the latter half of 2024, led by Zhang Yutong, former Managing Partner at GSR Ventures and now President of Moon's Dark Side, launched in response to competition from ByteDance's Doubao. In October 2024 alone, the ad spending reached a staggering 199 million yuan, far exceeding the total for the July-September quarter. Such an intensity of cash burn can only be described as highly efficient. For comparison, according to Knowledge Atlas's IPO prospectus, its R&D expenses skyrocketed from 84.4 million yuan in 2022 to 2.195 billion yuan in 2024; in the first half of 2025, they reached 1.595 billion yuan, with cumulative R&D investment totaling approximately 4.4 billion yuan. Of course, computing power costs are a major profit drain. In 2024 alone, Knowledge Atlas's computing service fees amounted to 1.553 billion yuan, accounting for 70.7% of its R&D expenses, all treated as period costs without capitalizing into assets. While Moon's Dark Side has Alibaba's approximately $400 million "cloud credit" investment, can these credits, worth about 2.8 billion yuan, support the company's computing power demands from 2023 to 2025? A noteworthy fact is that during the large-scale user acquisition campaign starting September 2024, Kimi's user registrations and monthly active users significantly led Knowledge Atlas's consumer-facing demand.

Compared to fellow "AI Six Tigers" MINIMAX-WP and Knowledge Atlas, Moon's Dark Side holds a significant advantage in cash reserves. As of the end of September 2025, MINIMAX-WP's cash on hand was $1.046 billion (approximately 7.3 billion yuan); meanwhile, Knowledge Atlas had only 2.55 billion yuan in cash and cash equivalents as of June 30, 2025. Based on their prospectuses, their cumulative equity fundraising amounts were approximately 10.9 billion yuan for MINIMAX-WP and 8.3 billion yuan for Knowledge Atlas, both lower than Moon's Dark Side's verifiable total of 14.3 billion yuan. Notably, the combined IPO fundraising for these two companies currently rushing to list is about 8 billion yuan. Knowledge Atlas, with an issue price of HK$116.20 per share, aims to raise over HK$4.3 billion (approximately 4.042 billion yuan), while MINIMAX-WP, listing at HK$165 per share, plans to raise HK$4.189 billion (approximately 3.938 billion yuan). Only after adding these IPO proceeds would MINIMAX-WP's total fundraising barely surpass that of Moon's Dark Side.

However, looking at the rate of cash consumption, MINIMAX-WP faces more pronounced pressure. Its prospectus forecasts a monthly cash burn of approximately $280 million (about 1.97 billion yuan) in 2025, implying an annual burn rate exceeding 23 billion yuan, far surpassing Moon's Dark Side's level. But merely examining cash reserves fails to capture the characteristic "high investment, high consumption, high growth, high losses" profile of large AI model companies. MINIMAX-WP's prospectus shows its revenue grew 782% year-over-year in 2024 to $30.5 million (about 220 million yuan), and further increased to $53.4 million (about 380 million yuan) in the first three quarters of 2025, a 174.7% increase year-over-year. However, losses widened simultaneously, with a net loss of $465 million (about 3.27 billion yuan) in 2024 and cumulative losses over nearly four years reaching $1.32 billion (approximately 9.29 billion yuan). Knowledge Atlas shows a similar pattern, with 2024 revenue growing 151% year-over-year to 310 million yuan and H1 2025 revenue at 190 million yuan, up 325% year-over-year; its cumulative losses over three and a half years exceeded 6.2 billion yuan, a slightly smaller magnitude than MINIMAX-WP. Moon's Dark Side's situation can be partially inferred from MINIMAX-WP and Knowledge Atlas. While specific revenue figures and profitability status remain undisclosed, the growth trend appears intact. Yang Zhilin mentioned in the letter that from September to November 2025, the average monthly growth rate of Kimi's paying users, both overseas and domestic, exceeded 170%, with overseas API revenue growing approximately fourfold. Its Kimi K2 model, with an ultra-low training cost of $4.6 million, set an industry record and surpassed GPT-5 on some open-source model leaderboards, boosting its technical reputation and driving overseas user growth and paid conversions.

Not going public does not equate to not wanting to go public. Yang Zhilin stated plainly in the internal letter that the core reason for not rushing an IPO is "sufficient current cash holdings, and the ability to raise even larger funds in the primary market," noting that their Series B/C fundraising already exceeds most IPO and listed company private placement sizes. Behind this statement lies the strategic freedom afforded by the ten-billion-yuan cash reserve. Based on its relatively "frugal" annual burn rate of 1.6 billion yuan, the 10 billion yuan cash reserve could sustain normal operations for over six years, allowing it to advance K3 model development and GPU expansion plans without relying on secondary market financing, enabling its "counter-trend" stance amidst the industry's listing wave. Notably, previous equity divestments by Moon's Dark Side executives in the primary market also indirectly affirm their lack of urgency to rely on an IPO for capital exit. A Jiemian News report in April 2024 stated that after the Series A+ round closed in February 2024, founder Yang Zhilin cashed out $40 million by selling personal shares, sparking discussion. At the time, Matrix Partners China investor David Zhang commented that if both new and existing investors had no objections during a startup's rapid growth phase, it was reasonable for founding teams to cash out small amounts to improve their lives. A subsequent follow-up by National Business Daily reported that after market discussion, Moon's Dark Side responded to media, denying the founder's cash-out as untrue and mentioning the company's announced employee incentive plan. However, a LatePost report in November 2025 indicated that the share sales by Moon's Dark Side executives were factual. Regardless of the rumor's veracity, the primary market already possesses sufficient liquidity to support capital exits for Moon's Dark Side's core team, undoubtedly reducing the urgency for an IPO-based cash-out.

On a deeper level, the unresolved dispute with GSR Ventures might be a significant hidden factor behind Moon's Dark Side's decision to postpone listing. The root of this dispute traces back to the spin-off process of Moon's Dark Side from Recurrent AI in 2023. Yang Zhilin co-founded Recurrent AI in 2016. In 2019, GSR Ventures, led by partner Zhang Yutong, invested in the company, and Zhang was appointed as a director. In February 2023, Yang decided to spin off and establish Moon's Dark Side, reaching a verbal agreement with Recurrent AI's management: Recurrent AI would receive a 9.5% stake in Moon's Dark Side for free, while Yang would forfeit half of his equity in Recurrent AI. However, this agreement was never formalized in a written board resolution. After Moon's Dark Side's establishment in April 2023, Zhang Yutong's husband, Wang Zhen, held a small stake. In April 2024, Zhang Yutong left GSR Ventures (later disclosed by Neil Shen as being fired). Shen discovered she held 9 million founder shares in Moon's Dark Side (approximately 14%), far exceeding the stake allocated to Recurrent AI. In November 2024, GSR Ventures, jointly with several old shareholders of Recurrent AI, initiated arbitration in Hong Kong against Yang Zhilin and others, seeking nearly $100 million in compensation, arguing the spin-off harmed Recurrent AI and its shareholders' interests. In December 2024, Shen publicly accused Zhang Yutong of "concealing conflicts of interest," violating her fiduciary duties as a director and fund trustee responsibilities. While expressing willingness to exempt Yang and Moon's Dark Side from blame, he directed criticism at Zhang. Yang responded that the spin-off had received signed consent from all directors and that Zhang's shares were consideration for her services as a co-founder, independent of the spin-off event. As of May 2025, Shen still told Securities Times that the dispute was under arbitration and handled by lawyers; current public information suggests the dispute is in a state of "silence," with no new legal developments or settlement announcements. However, Zhang Yutong has since appeared publicly as President of Moon's Dark Side, responsible for company strategy and commercialization, indicating her internal position is further consolidated. If Moon's Dark Side were to initiate an IPO now, this pending arbitration would be an unavoidable obstacle.

From an industry development logic perspective, Moon's Dark Side's "no IPO" choice also aligns with the long-term development patterns of large model companies. Overseas large model firms still primarily rely on primary market funding. At the end of December 2025, SoftBank Group (SFTBY) announced the final completion of an additional $22.5 billion investment in OpenAI on December 26 (US time), with foreign media suggesting OpenAI is aiming for a trillion-dollar IPO valuation expectation. On January 7, Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk congratulated the xAI team; reports indicate xAI oversubscribed its Series E round, originally targeting $15 billion but ultimately raising $20 billion, pushing its valuation to approximately $230 billion. Developing large AI models requires sustained massive investment. The prospectuses of both MINIMAX-WP and Knowledge Atlas indicate they plan to significantly increase R&D expenditures in the future. The performance pressure from the public markets could constrain a company's freedom to invest in R&D. Yang Zhilin clearly stated in the internal letter that the core goal for 2026 is to "target frontier companies like Anthropic and become a world-leading AGI company," planning to use Series C funds for GPU expansion and K3 model development while substantially increasing employee incentives. These strategic initiatives require stable funding support and a宽松的发展环境 (lenient development environment), not the short-term performance scrutiny of the public markets. For Moon's Dark Side, perhaps short-term "non-listing" is the optimal rational choice based on a comprehensive assessment of current circumstances.