Chinese artificial intelligence model Kimi K3, developed by Beijing-based Moonshot AI, has suspended new subscriptions after demand overwhelmed capacity within days of its launch, highlighting challenges for Chinese AI models serving a growing user base amid the U.S.-China tech race. Moonshot AI wrote in a X post that “Kimi K3 has received far more love than we expected” and that “over the past 48 hours, demand has pushed close to the limits of our current capacity,” prioritizing existing subscribers and pausing new ones while adding capacity in batches. K3’s public rollout in July, targeting advanced models by Anthropic, OpenAI and others, has rattled U.S. rivals; at 2.8 trillion parameters, it is deemed the world’s largest open-source AI model. Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia, said new model releases can strain compute infrastructure, indicating Moonshot lacks sufficient compute chips for the surge, likely due to not anticipating K3’s popularity, and that K3 is “very demanding” in compute requirements. Kimi K3 topped the chart for front-end coding capability on the Arena evaluation platform after release. Its debut pressured U.S. tech stocks on worries that affordable Chinese AI models may undercut pricing power, despite U.S.-led restrictions barring China from advanced chips. Other Chinese models include Alibaba’s Qwen3.8 Max with 2.4 trillion parameters and Zhipu’s