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 |
Background
editMoonshot 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]
Products
editKimi
editIn 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]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b c Lunden, Ingrid (21 February 2024). "China's Moonshot AI zooms to $2.5B valuation, raising $1B for an LLM focused on long context". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 25 July 2024. Retrieved 10 September 2024.
- ^ a b Jiang, Ben (7 August 2024). "Moonshot AI founder builds business in the mould of ByteDance, OpenAI". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 8 August 2024. Retrieved 10 September 2024.
- ^ a b c Zhang, Jane (27 February 2024). "Alibaba Leads Record Deal to Mint $2.5 Billion China AI Firm". Bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on 18 March 2024. Retrieved 10 September 2024.
- ^ Pandaily (23 April 2024). "Founder of Moonshot AI Cashed out Tens of Millions of USD". Pandaily. Retrieved 10 September 2024.
- ^ "Kimi也要出海？月之暗面：目前没有开发和发布海外产品计划_10%公司_澎湃新闻-The Paper". www.thepaper.cn. 23 June 2024. Retrieved 10 September 2024.
- ^ Huang, Zheping (5 August 2024). "Tencent Joins $300 Million Financing for China's AI Unicorn". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 10 September 2024.
- ^ a b c Olcott, Eleanor (3 May 2024). "Four start-ups lead China's race to match OpenAI's ChatGPT". www.ft.com. Archived from the original on 8 September 2024. Retrieved 10 September 2024.
- ^ Le, Kelly (20 May 2024). "Moonshot AI's Kimi Chatbot offers paid service in bid to profit from mass users". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 26 June 2024. Retrieved 10 September 2024.