China AI start-up Moonshot snags funds at US$18 billion valuation

Moonshot AI is seeking to raise as much as US$1 billion in an expanded funding round that would value the start-up at about US$18 billion, more than quadrupling its valuation in just three months and underscoring growing interest in Chinese artificial intelligence developers racing to rival Silicon Valley leaders.The company behind the Kimi chatbot kicked off discussions for the latest round, people familiar with the matter said, after securing more than US$700 million earlier this year, which valued it at US$10 billion. That marks a significant jump from its US$4.3 billion valuation in a US$500 million tranche towards the end of last year, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing private information.It is unclear who is taking part in the latest round, but Moonshot backers including Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings and 5Y Capital increased their bets at the US$10 billion level, Bloomberg News reported last month.A Moonshot spokesperson did not respond to requests seeking comment.The speed of Moonshot’s fundraising reflects growing investor appetite for a group of Chinese start-ups vying with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic to develop world-class AI services. In Hong Kong, rivals Zhipu and MiniMax Group have recently traded at valuations between US$30 billion and US$40 billion, with MiniMax at one point surpassing Chinese internet incumbent Baidu in market capitalisation.Part of the frenzy was ignited by the breakout hit of open-source agent OpenClaw, prompting China’s top cloud providers and AI upstarts to launch their own versions for seamless adoption.