Moonshot AI explained

Beijing Moonshot AI Technology Co., Ltd.
Native Name:北京月之暗面科技有限公司
Type:Private
Location:Beijing, China
Num Employees:200 (2024)
Industry:Information technology

Moonshot AI (Moonshot;) is an artificial intelligence (AI) company based in Beijing, China. As of 2024, it has been dubbed one of China's "AI Tiger" companies by investors.

Background

Moonshot was founded in March 2023 by Yang Zhilin, Zhou Xinyu and Wu Yuxin. It was launched on the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon which was Yang's favorite album and the inspiration for the company's name.[1] [2] Moonshot was valued at $300 million when it received its initial funding of $60 million and had 40 employees.[3]

In February 2024, Alibaba Group led a $1 billion funding round for Moonshot, which gave it a valuation of $2.5 billion. It was reported that Yang and related individuals allegedly cashed out $40 million worth of shares, considered unusually large for a company's first year.[4]

In June 2024, it was reported that Moonshot was planning to enter the US market. An insider revealed Moonshot was developing products for the US market, including an AI role-playing chat application called Ohai as well as a music video generator called Noisee. In response, Moonshot stated it had no plans to develop and release overseas products.[5]

In August 2024, Tencent and Gaorong Capital joined as investors in a $300 million funding round that valued Moonshot at $3.3 billion.[6]

Other investors of Moonshot have included HongShan, Meituan, Xiaohongshu and ZhenFund.[7]

Products

Kimi

In October 2023, Moonshot launched its first AI chatbot, Kimi which got its moniker from Yang's English name. It had emerged as the closest rival to Baidu's Ernie Bot.

In March 2024, Moonshot claimed Kimi could handle 2 million Chinese characters in a single prompt which was a significant upgrade from the previous version that could only handle 200,000. Due to the increased number of users, on 21 March Kimi suffered an outage for two days and Moonshot had to issue an apology.[8]

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Lunden . Ingrid . 21 February 2024 . China's Moonshot AI zooms to $2.5B valuation, raising $1B for an LLM focused on long context . 10 September 2024 . TechCrunch . en-US . 25 July 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240725125337/https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/21/moonshot-ai-funding-china/ . live .
  2. Web site: Jiang . Ben . 7 August 2024 . Moonshot AI founder builds business in the mould of ByteDance, OpenAI . 10 September 2024 . South China Morning Post . en . 8 August 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240808054022/https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3273461/meet-yang-zhilin-moonshot-ai-founder-builds-business-mould-bytedance-openai . live .
  3. News: Zhang . Jane . 27 February 2024 . Alibaba Leads Record Deal to Mint $2.5 Billion China AI Firm . 10 September 2024 . Bloomberg.com . en . 18 March 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240318062114/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/alibaba-leads-record-deal-to-create-2-5-billion-china-ai-player? . live .
  4. Web site: Pandaily . 23 April 2024 . Founder of Moonshot AI Cashed out Tens of Millions of USD . 10 September 2024 . Pandaily . en-US.
  5. Web site: 23 June 2024 . Kimi也要出海？月之暗面：目前没有开发和发布海外产品计划_10%公司_澎湃新闻-The Paper . 10 September 2024 . www.thepaper.cn.
  6. News: Huang . Zheping . 5 August 2024 . Tencent Joins $300 Million Financing for China's AI Unicorn . 10 September 2024 . Bloomberg.com . en . 10 September 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240910104305/https://www.bloomberg.com/tosv2.html?vid=&uuid=762f4760-6f61-11ef-bfbf-ea8448f77e0e&url=L25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZXMvMjAyNC0wOC0wNS90ZW5jZW50LWpvaW5zLTMwMC1taWxsaW9uLWZpbmFuY2luZy1mb3ItY2hpbmEtcy1haS11bmljb3Ju . live .
  7. Web site: Olcott . Eleanor . 3 May 2024 . Four start-ups lead China's race to match OpenAI's ChatGPT . 10 September 2024 . www.ft.com . 8 September 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240908064007/https://www.ft.com/content/4e6676c8-eaf9-4d4a-a3dc-71a09b220bf8 . live .
  8. Web site: Le . Kelly . 20 May 2024 . Moonshot AI's Kimi Chatbot offers paid service in bid to profit from mass users . 10 September 2024 . South China Morning Post . en . 26 June 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240626173032/https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3263374/moonshot-ais-kimi-chatbot-chinas-answer-chatgpt-offers-premium-service-mass-users . live .

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