Kimi K3 Masuk Tiga Besar Indeks AI, Moonshot Berani Pasang Harga Tinggi

Stan Moonshot shows off Kimi K3 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China. The AI model ranked third in the Artificial Intelligence Analysis Index. Photo: China Daily

JAKARTA - Moonshot AI's artificial intelligence model Kimi K3 ranks third in the Intelligence Index of independent rating agency Artificial Analysis. In the Chinese market, Moonshot also dares to set a much higher tariff than its competitors.

China Daily, quoted Tuesday, July 21, said Kimi K3 was released on Friday with 2.8 trillion parameters, image understanding capabilities, and a context window of up to 1 million tokens.

This model is designed to handle long-term programming work, knowledge-based tasks, and complex reasoning. Moonshot calls K3 the world's first open model in the 3 trillion parameter class.

The number of parameters generally describes the scale and complexity of the model. The context window shows the amount of information that can be processed in one session.

Artificial Analysis gave Kimi K3 a score of 57 in the Intelligence Index. This value places it in third place, below Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol.

Moonshot plans to release the full weights of the model on July 27. Model weights are a collection of training output values that determine how AI processes inputs and produces answers.

Amid these technological achievements, Moonshot is also accelerating its business steps. The company is reported to have circulated a shareholder resolution to seek approval for listing shares in Hong Kong.

The initial public offering or IPO is said to be completed within six months. However, the report is still awaiting shareholder approval.

Moonshot's annual recurring revenue reached 300 million US dollars in June, up from 200 million US dollars in April. According to the company, its revenue increased several times after K3 was launched.

Guo Tao, a member of the China Artificial Intelligence Association, believes that the listing of Moonshot shares can be an example of capital market financing for the country's large AI model industry.

"Global capital will also reassess the growth potential of Chinese AI companies," said Guo.

According to Guo, investors will pay more attention to companies that have stable revenue, are able to turn free users into paying customers, and use AI in real business and industry activities.

Moonshot also has a high tariff for the size of the Chinese market. The cost of using the Kimi K3 API reaches 100 yuan or about 14.7 US dollars for every 1 million tokens issued.

An API is a path that allows other applications to use the capabilities of an AI model. The output token is a piece of text generated by the model, not the exact number of words.

The K3 tariff is far above Xiaomi's DeepSeek V4-Pro and MiMo-V2.5-Pro, which set 6 yuan. Z.ai's GLM-5.2 costs 28 yuan, while Alibaba's Qwen3.7-Max costs 36 yuan.

"The determination of the K3 price breaks the long-standing low-price competition in the domestic AI industry and directs it to a model that makes pricing capabilities," said Guo.

He assessed that the pricing strategy could improve the quality of revenue, finance computing infrastructure and model improvements, and narrow the valuation gap between Chinese and US AI companies.

Although more expensive than domestic competitors, the K3 tariff is still below the flagship model from the US. It costs about half the price of the GPT-5.6 Sol and one-third the price of the Claude Fable 5.

Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of technology magazine Wired, told China Daily that the cost of tokens will become increasingly important as companies and individuals spend more money on AI services.

Ion Stoica, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, estimates that the gap between the capabilities of China's open model and the world's leading AI technology has narrowed. Previously, the gap was estimated to be six to nine months. After K3 was released, the distance was estimated to be two to three months.

The demand far exceeded expectations, causing Moonshot to temporarily stop new subscriptions for consumers. Service for existing customers continues.

The company is adding capacity and will gradually reopen subscriptions. Moonshot also plans to separate Kimi's main service from the Kimi Code package for programming users.