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China’s open AI strategy is changing the race

China’s Kimi K3 and the rise of open-weight AI models

scientificamerican.com

July 24, 2026

5 min read

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Summary

Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 was launched on July 17 but halted new subscriptions due to overwhelming demand. The company plans to release K3's full model weights by July 27, enabling other organizations to host and modify the model.

Key Takeaways

Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter AI model, stopped accepting new subscriptions due to overwhelming demand but plans to release its full model weights by July 27.
Kimi K3 performs well in benchmarks, generally surpassing OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8, but remains behind Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol.
The release of Kimi K3's weights is intended to allow other organizations to host and modify the model, contrasting with the private weight policies of leading U.S. AI developers.
Chinese leaders advocate for open-weight models as part of a broader political message, although experts caution that "open weight" does not equate to "open source," which requires more transparency.

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