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Moonshot AI (Moonshot; Chinese: 月之暗面; pinyin: Yuèzhī Anmiàn) 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.
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Native name | 北京月之暗面科技有限公司 |
|---|---|
| Company type | Private |
| Industry | Information technology |
| Founded | March 2023 |
| Founders |
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| Headquarters | Beijing, China |
Key people |
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Number of employees | 200 (2024) |
| Website | moonshot |
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.[2][3]
In February 2024, Alibaba Group lead a $1 billion funding round for Moonshot which gave it a valuation of $2.5 billion.[3] It was reported that Yang and related individuals allegedly cashed out $40 million worth of shares which was 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.[1][3][7]
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.[1][7]
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 thousand. Due to the increased number of users, on 21 March Kimi suffered an outage for two days and Moonshot had to issue an apology.[7][8]
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