Moonshot AI Technology Co (月之暗面) has told investors it is preparing to list in as early as six months, seizing the opportunity to tap capital markets after its latest model upended industry perceptions of China’s burgeoning capabilities and sent global tech stocks reeling.
The Chinese AI pioneer has officially distributed the shareholder resolution to its investors, seeking the blessing of its backers on a Hong Kong listing, people familiar with the matter said.
The initiation of the notification process indicates an initial public offering (IPO) could happen as soon as within the next half a year.
Moonshot is in the process of wrapping a fundraising round that might value the three-year-old start-up at more than US$30 billion, the people said.
The start-up judged the time was right after annual recurring revenue — a gauge of future sales — hit US$300 million last month, they said.
Moonshot had been preparing to pull the trigger on its debut before the release of the Kimi K3 on Friday last week, a more advanced open-weight model that it said outperforms all rivals except for Anthropic PBC’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 on overall capability.
Many observers were impressed by the capability and size — at 2.8 trillion parameters — for an open-weight model, meaning its parameters are available for users to download and customize.
The Beijing-based start-up started considering a listing in Hong Kong earlier this year and has held talks with China International Capital Corp (中國國際金融) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc about working on an offering. China’s PEdaily reported on the potential timing for Moonshot’s listing on Saturday.
Moonshot has begun the process of dismantling what is known as a “red chip” structure, a requirement for a smoother overseas listing process. Representatives for Moonshot did not respond to requests for comment outside of regular business hours.
Separately, another Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek (深度求索) is planning to launch a fresh fundraising round at a valuation of about 500 billion yuan (US$73.82 billion) ahead of a potential mainland IPO, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
The plan comes just weeks after the Hangzhou-based company, which drew global attention with its low-cost AI models earlier last year, raised about US$7.4 billion last month at a post-money valuation of about 450 billion yuan, the people said.
Filings by two Chinese investors later suggested DeepSeek was valued at 350.88 billion yuan, or around US$52 billion. DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
-Taipei Times