China's Moonshot AI has announced the public release of its Kimi K3 model, with the model's weights available for download on Monday. The Beijing-based company's founder, Yang Zhilin, hopes this strategic decision will attract more users by offering better accessibility and transparency than competing US proprietary systems. The launch is seen as a sign that Chinese companies can compete with those having full access to NVIDIA's AI accelerators on a smaller budget and with fewer advanced resources. Since the launch of Kimi K3, Moonshot AI's daily sales have reportedly increased at least sixfold, and the company is now looking to raise a new investment round at a $50 billion valuation as part of preparations for a potential IPO in Hong Kong later this year. Kimi K3 boasts a 2.8 trillion parameter set and is said to be on par with US companies' best AI models, Anthropic's Claude Fable and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol. The rise of Chinese open-weight AI models like Kimi K3 and Zai's GLM 5.2 has raised concerns among US companies, with Anthropic and OpenAI lobbying the Trump administration for tighter restrictions citing potential risks of intellectual property theft and national security threats.