Alibaba Sponsors Record-Breaking Funding for Chinese AI Startup Moonshot AI

  Moonshot AI

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has led the largest-ever funding round for a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, Moonshot AI. The multinational e-commerce and technology company has sponsored the startup’s $1 billion Series B funding, increasing Moonshot AI’s valuation to an estimated $2.5 billion, as reported by multiple sources in late February.

The Rise of Moonshot AI

Moonshot AI was established in March of the previous year and launched its large language model chatbot Kimi in November. The startup claims that Kimi can process up to 200,000 Chinese characters in a single conversation, a capacity that surpasses the industry leader OpenAI’s most advanced version of ChatGPT by eight times, as per TechCrunch.

The company’s name, Moonshot AI, is a nod to Pink Floyd’s iconic album, The Dark Side of the Moon, a favorite of the founder, Yang Zhilin. Zhilin is also involved in the development of another AI startup, Recurrent.AI, which has successfully raised around $60 million to date.

Key Players in the Funding Round

The recent funding round saw investment firm Monolith Management and HongShan, the Chinese segment of California’s Sequoia Capital, assisting Alibaba. Despite numerous reports on the matter by local Chinese media outlets including 36kr, the parties involved have largely chosen to remain silent.

TIME Magazine also highlighted other Chinese AI startups, such as Baichuan and Zhipu, that have successfully drawn considerable investments.