Moonshot’s latest Kimi model is so popular that the company just gated new users
· Business Insider
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- Moonshot AI's new Kimi K3 model is so popular, it's straining the company's GPUs.
- The startup said it saw massive demand over the last two days and had to pause new subscriptions.
- The new model is the latest sign that China is narrowing the gap with the US in AI.
One of China's biggest AI players is struggling to cope with its newfound success.
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In a Sunday X post, Chinese startup Moonshot AI wrote that its recently released Kimi K3 model has "received far more love" than expected, and its GPUs were feeling the strain.
"Over the past 48 hours, demand has pushed close to the limits of our current capacity," the company wrote. "To protect the experience of existing subscribers, we're temporarily pausing new subscriptions and prioritizing compute for current members."
It added that existing subscribers would not be affected and that it was adding capacity as fast as possible to "reopen new subscription spots in batches."
Moonshot AI announced the launch of Kimi K3 on Friday, calling it "Open Frontier Intelligence" and promising to rival models from Anthropic and OpenAI. The company said Kimi K3 has "frontier intelligence" for tasks like coding, knowledge work, and reasoning.
The company said it plans to release a full open-weight model on July 27. That means developers will be able to download the model's trained parameters and run, modify, or build upon it themselves.
In its X post, Moonshot AI added that it is testing another method to use its compute more effectively — splitting membership tiers into two plans. The two plans are "Kimi Membership for Kimi Web, App, and Work; and Kimi Code Membership for coding workflows."
"This will help us match compute more precisely and keep the experience stable," the company wrote.
Kimi K3's release is the latest indication that the gap between the capabilities of frontier models from Chinese and American AI labs is narrowing. Anthropic and OpenAI have repeatedly called for stronger government regulation to help the US maintain its lead over China in the AI race.
Chinese models are having their moment as more companies see them as cost-effective alternatives to US models. Several US executives, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, have publicly spoken about their companies' use of models such as Kimi, Z.ai's GLM-5.2, and Alibaba's Qwen.
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