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Moonshot AI

Chinese AI lab based in Beijing, founded by Yang Zhilin, and maker of the Kimi chatbot and Kimi K-series open-weight models. Regarded as one of China's leading 'AI tiger' startups and reportedly filed confidentially for a Hong Kong IPO in 2026.

Track Record

Anthropic reported that Moonshot AI covertly rerouted Kimi chatbot user queries to Claude and used the exchanges to train its own models, without disclosing to users they were being answered by a third-party US model. Anthropic said Moonshot routed over 23 million exchanges to Claude between May and July 2026, with nearly 300,000 requests funneled through a proxy network of roughly 5,380 accounts largely registered via servers in Singapore and Japan to obscure the data's origin. China's Cyberspace Administration (CAC) opened a formal data-security probe into Moonshot specifically, examining whether sensitive Chinese user and state-linked data reached US servers without proper safeguards. The probe came as Moonshot was reportedly pursuing a confidential Hong Kong IPO filing.