Moonshot AI — the Alibaba-backed startup behind China’s fast-rising Kimi chatbot — is climbing the funding ladder again, and it’s doing it fast.
According to two people familiar with the deal, Moonshot is closing a new funding round that values the company at about $4.8 billion. That’s up from roughly $4.3 billion just weeks ago, which is a pretty sharp jump in a short window. The sources said the round is likely to wrap soon because investor demand has been strong, although Moonshot hasn’t commented publicly as of publication.
The timing here matters. Moonshot isn’t coming out of nowhere — Kimi had already surged in popularity in China months before DeepSeek made waves last year — but the broader market is heating up again too. Since Moonshot’s last round in December, rival Chinese AI companies Zhipu and MiniMax have gone public in Hong Kong and gained momentum, adding more fuel to investor interest in “next up” AI IPO candidates.
That IPO excitement is starting to shape how private AI startups are priced. The same sources told CNBC that Moonshot’s valuation could rise even further in later rounds, simply because the market is now paying closer attention to Chinese AI companies that look like realistic public-market contenders.
Part of what’s driving all of this is the simple reality that China’s AI ecosystem is operating in a different environment than the U.S. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, still isn’t officially available in mainland China. Beijing restricts access to many American internet services, and at the same time, U.S. policy has made it harder for American companies to do business with China. The result is a huge domestic opportunity for Chinese-built chatbots and AI platforms — and a wave of funding chasing the companies that seem best positioned to fill that demand.
Moonshot’s last funding round was announced on December 31, with investors including IDG, Alibaba, and Tencent, according to Chinese outlet LatePost. For now, Moonshot hasn’t said anything about IPO plans, but the market is clearly paying attention to the public comps. As of Monday’s close, Zhipu (listed as Knowledge Atlas) was valued around $13 billion, while MiniMax sat even higher at $15.2 billion, based on Wind Information data.
The bigger takeaway is that Moonshot’s latest valuation bump isn’t just another fundraising headline — it’s a sign of how quickly China’s AI race is maturing, and how aggressively investors are lining up behind the next generation of homegrown model builders.
This analysis is based on reporting from CNBC.
Image courtesy of Moonshot AI.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
