On the day Google postponed the launch of its next-generation AI model, Gemini 3.5 Pro, Chinese company Moonshot AI unveiled its largest open-weight model, Kimi K3, and achieved the top spot in a global coding evaluation. This shift suggests a changing landscape in the global AI competition, traditionally dominated by U.S. closed models.
According to the IT industry on July 19, Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 on July 17 (local time), featuring 2.8 trillion parameters, making it the largest open-weight model ever disclosed. Open-weight models allow users to download, modify, and utilize the model's weights (parameters).
Kimi K3 supports a context window of 1 million tokens and multimodal text and image processing, with the total weight set to be revealed on July 27.
The model's performance is competitive with top U.S. models. Within hours of its release, Kimi K3 ranked first in the frontend code category on the evaluation platform Arena, achieving a 76% win rate against Anthropic's latest model, Claude Fable 5. While it did not surpass Fable 5 or OpenAI's GPT-5.6 in overall rankings, it outperformed Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5 in coding and agent evaluations. Bank of America noted that despite limited access to advanced chips, Moonshot AI made significant progress through improvements in its training and design methods.
In contrast, Google failed to deliver its highly anticipated model. The release of Gemini 3.5 Pro, initially expected on July 17, was delayed again due to its coding and complex reasoning performance falling short of competing models. Following this news, Alphabet's stock dropped by about 4%. Google had previously scrapped its existing base model in June and restarted pre-training, but reports indicate that the second version also did not meet the standards of Fable 5 and GPT-5.6. As of now, Google has not disclosed any official model cards, pricing, or benchmarks.
The market reaction echoed the 'Deep Seek Shock' from early last year. Following the launch of Kimi K3, shares of Chinese AI competitor Z.ai plummeted by as much as 30% during trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange, marking its largest drop since its listing in January. Minimax fell by 16%, and Alibaba's shares dropped by 4%. Despite TSMC announcing a 77% increase in operating profit for the second quarter compared to the previous year, its stock fell by 7% on July 17, while SoftBank, often seen as a proxy for OpenAI, also saw a 9% decline.
Moonshot AI's new model comes ahead of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), China's largest AI event. On July 17, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote address at WAIC in Shanghai, stating, "The development of AI should not be a solo act by one country but a symphony of international cooperation." He announced the launch of the World AI Cooperation Organization (WAICO), based in Shanghai, with 29 founding member countries, including Russia, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan. Xi also pledged to provide AI training opportunities for 5,000 individuals in developing countries over the next five years and to open China's AI meteorological systems to 30 countries.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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