(March 26): Moonshot AI is in the early stages of considering an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong to tap investors’ growing fascination with artificial intelligence, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Beijing-based firm behind chatbot Kimi has held talks with China International Capital Corp (CICC) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc about working on an offering, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. The timing of a potential IPO is uncertain, they said.
China is intensifying scrutiny around Hong Kong share sales by so-called red chip companies, which incorporate overseas to access foreign capital.
Still, Beijing wants to bolster home-grown champions in sectors such as AI and robotics, and has shown consistent support for the likes of DeepSeek, Unitree and Moonshot, whose models rank among the best-performing from China. Other AI firms such as Zhipu and MiniMax Group Inc have soared since their listings in Hong Kong in January, with both now valued at roughly US$40 billion ($51.33 billion).
Moonshot’s deliberations are ongoing and might not result in an IPO, the people said. Representatives of Moonshot and Goldman declined to comment. CICC didn’t respond to requests for comments.
See also: SpaceX targeting up to US$75 bil in blockbuster IPO, Bloomberg reports
Moonshot has been tapping private markets for capital, leveraging growing investor appetite for its publicly traded peers. The company is already in discussions about raising as much as US$1 billion in funding after securing more than US$700 million in a round earlier this year, people familiar with the talks have said. The expanded round would value the company at about US$18 billion, Bloomberg News reported.
Moonshot was founded by former Tsinghua University professor Yang Zhilin. Its backers include Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Tencent Holdings Ltd and 5Y Capital. The company released an upgrade of its flagship Kimi AI model in January. Known as K2.5, it can process text, images and videos simultaneously from a single prompt, and it also powers Kimi Claw, Moonshot’s version of AI agent OpenClaw.
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