Chinese startup Moonshot AI recently announced Kimi K3 as the largest open source artificial intelligence (IA) model to date, with which it claims to overcome OpenAI and Anthropic systems.
© Cheng Xin/Getty Images
by
Lusa
Moonshot AI
AndThis announcement marks another step in technological competition between Beijing and Washington.
Moonshot AI stated that K3 reaches 2.8 billion parameters – a metric indicating the complexity of an AI system during its training – surpassing other open Chinese models such as DeepSeek V4 Pro (1.6 billion) and Zhipu AI GLM-5 (744,000 million).
Technology has indicated that the model is designed for complex programming, intellectual work and reasoning tasks and is already available through the Kimi chatbot, Kimi Work application, Kimi Code tool and its API, with the complete release of the weights of the model scheduled for July 27.
This presents itself as a rival of Claude [Anthropic] or ChatGPT [OpenAI] at a lower price.
Moonshot recognized that K3’s overall performance “is still behind the most powerful proprietary models” – Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol – but sustained that he consistently surpassed the other models analyzed.
In an analysis carried out by the IA Arena model assessment platform, the model won first place in six of seven categories – branding and marketing, reference-based design, data and analysis, consumer products, simulations and content creation tools -, second only in the video games category, behind Fable 5.
The Artificial Analysis consultant placed K3 on a level comparable to Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5 – considered the second best models of Anthropic and OpenAI, respectively – although it remained behind Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sun in general performance.
The announcement takes place in the context of increasing rivalry between Chinese leading technology — including Moonshot, Zhipu, DeepSeek and Alibaba —, which bet on opening, low prices and fast marketing to reduce distance from the US and only one month of the launch of Zhipu GLM-5.2 model.
In addition to competing with U.S. models, these technologies face Washington restrictions on the export of advanced chips and machinery for their production.
However, Bank of America cited by CNBC observed that K3 demonstrates that Chinese companies continue to advance despite these limitations.
The launch coincided with the opening of the World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Shanghai – an event aimed at a sector that the Chinese authorities classified as strategic – when Xi Jinping defended the use of open source to ensure that “all sectors and companies can benefit from the AI”.