Chinese AI Startup Moonshot Reaches $20 Billion Valuation in Three Years

Moonshot AI, founded in 2023 by former Meta and Google Brain researcher Yang Zhilin, closed a $2 billion funding round at $20 billion valuation, led by Meituan. The eight-fold increase from its $2.5 billion valuation two years ago places the Kimi chatbot maker among the world's most valuable private AI companies, competing with OpenAI and Anthropic despite its recent founding. The round reflects investor confidence in China's domestic large language model sector amid geopolitical constraints on Western AI access.