by SONG Jianan

Moonshot AI, the Chinese startup behind AI chatbot Kimi, has raised about $2 billion in a new funding round valuing the company at more than $20 billion, China Peakedness said on Thursday, in one of the largest private financings by a Chinese AI startup.

The round was led by Meituan Long-Z Capital, with participation from Tsing Ventures, China Mobile and CPE, formerly known as CITIC Private Equity.

It was the startup's largest fundraising since its 2023 founding.

Founded by former Google Brain and Meta AI researcher YANG Zhilin, Moonshot AI gained attention for Kimi Chat's long-text processing capabilities.

The company has more than 37.6 billion yuan cumulatively, surpassing rivals such as Zhipu AI and MiniMax.

Last month, Moonshot AI open-sourced its Kimi K2.6 coding model, after annual recurring revenue surpassed $100 million following the earlier K2.5 launch.

China Peakedness said Moonshot AI's ARR surpassed $200 million in April as subscription and API revenue accelerated.

The funding has fueled IPO speculation, though Yang said last year the company was in no rush to list.

The news came as reports said DeepSeek was seeking funding at a valuation that could approach $45 billion.

Moonshot AI scaled back advertising and Android-channel spending after DeepSeek released its open-source R1 model in February last year, drawing significant market attention away from Kimi.