Kimi-maker Moonshot AI targets $2 billion in annual revenue

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Moonshot AI, the Chinese lab behind the Kimi assistant and the open-weight K3 model, has set a target of $2 billion in annualized revenue by end of 2026, according to a Bloomberg report. The goal would double the company's revenue run rate from August — an aggressive projection reflecting K3's strong adoption since its summer launch. OpenRouter data shows K3 generating as many as 300 billion tokens per day, though usage has slipped slightly in recent months. At that scale, Moonshot still sits well below closed-weight peers: OpenAI and Anthropic are reportedly tracking toward $40 billion and $65 billion respectively. Open weights compress margins, but Moonshot's targets suggest the model can still drive meaningful commercial revenue. The revenue announcement arrives amid serious controversy: Anthropic this week accused Moonshot of a long-running model distillation campaign, alleging approximately 300,000 requests were routed from Kimi directly to Claude Opus, with over 23 million responses collected and used in Moonshot's training. TechCrunch characterized the practice as 'controversial — if not downright illegal.' The situation crystallizes tensions in the open-weight ecosystem: open models attract massive usage and are easier for enterprises to adopt, but competitive pressure can push labs toward legally fraught shortcuts that risk regulatory and legal blowback.