AIBRIEF
The Beijing startup is in early talks with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google on a deal that would be the first such pact between a Chinese AI company and a US hyperscaler.
Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based startup behind the Kimi model family, is in early talks with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to host its latest model, the open-weight Kimi K3, on their clouds in exchange for up to 30% of the revenue, three people familiar with the discussions told Reuters.
The arrangement, if it lands, would be the first major revenue-sharing pact between a Chinese AI company and a US hyperscaler. Kimi K3 is open-weight, meaning outside developers can download and modify it, so a paid cloud deal would put a downloadable model on paid US rails. Moonshot, Microsoft, Google, and AWS all declined to comment, and the talks are preliminary with no certainty of agreement.
The negotiations cover revenue splits, data access, and token-usage auditing, according to the Reuters wire carried by Yahoo Finance. Moonshot is backed by Alibaba.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last month he might add Moonshot to a US trade blacklist. US officials have also accused Moonshot of distilling from Anthropic's Fable model to build K3 and of illegally acquiring Nvidia chips. Moonshot has rejected the distillation claim via China's National Business Daily, citing original architectural changes, the wire reports.
What remains unknown is whether any of the three clouds signs. The 30% number and the open-weight template are now on the table for the next Chinese AI lab to copy.