Moonshot AI has closed its final round of private fundraising at a valuation of about $50 billion. The Chinese AI developer is now reportedly heading toward an initial public offering in Hong Kong in the first quarter of 2027.
Early Investor Meetings Could Start This Month
Per Bloomberg report, Moonshot has begun laying the groundwork for early-look meetings with investors. Some of those meetings could start as early as this month. The company is considering raising up to $5 billion in the deal.
The potential listing would be one of the most closely watched in Hong Kong. AI-driven deals set a fundraising record there this summer, and the pipeline is still filling. Kuaishou’s Kling AI has picked banks for a listing that could raise at least $1 billion. DeepSeek is close to securing at least $12 billion in funding ahead of its own IPO in early 2027.
Moonshot has filed confidentially for its IPO, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Bank of America is reportedly an overall coordinator. China International Capital Corp., Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs should be sponsor banks.
Valuation and Revenue Have Climbed
The previous funding round, which took place earlier this summer, valued Moonshot at about $35 billion. The company’s annual recurring revenue is about $1 billion, up from $300 million in June. People familiar with the matter expect it to reach $2 billion by December.
Moonshot gained global attention in July with Kimi K3, an open model that comes close to leading platforms from OpenAI and Anthropic on some metrics. Yang Zhilin founded the company in early 2023. He is a former Tsinghua University professor who previously worked at Meta Platforms and Google. Alibaba, Tencent and 5Y Capital are among its backers.
Safety Findings Add a Variable
Moonshot is also conducting an internal review after security researchers got two of its Kimi models to bypass their safeguards, the BBC reported.
Mindgard, a firm that tests the security of AI systems, said it found in July that Kimi K2.6 and K3 Swarm could evade the safety limits set by their developers. It used jailbreaking, a process of complex instructions designed to make a model ignore its guardrails. According to the BBC, researchers were able to get the models to explain how to make biological weapons and carry out assassinations.
Mindgard has not proven that the answers would work. It argues that the guardrails should have stopped the conversations from starting. The firm also said it was confident a jailbroken Kimi K2.6 could let hackers run code on its computing resources and connect to the internet, which could make it a launchpad for cyber-attacks.
Mindgard emailed Moonshot on July 27 and followed up about a week later. It published a blog post on September 12. Mindgard said Moonshot made contact only after the BBC asked for comment. Moonshot told the BBC it welcomes third-party input “as a key pillar for building better and safer AI.” It also said it is in discussions with Mindgard about the findings. In an email to Mindgard, Moonshot said its internal evaluations had shown a high refusal rate for these types of requests.
The findings reach beyond one company. Kimi is an open-weight model, so anyone could in theory run it on their own infrastructure. Alan Woodward, a professor at the University of Surrey, said such models could end up in the wrong hands but could also support cyber-defence. He and Mindgard founder Peter Garraghan both said more attention should go to identifying and prosecuting people who misuse AI.
Regulatory Scrutiny Still Unclear
The effect on the IPO is uncertain. Regulators have earlier opened a data-security probe into DeepSeek and Moonshot. The reason was that these two firms allegedly secretly routed customer data through Anthropic’s Claude models. There is still no result of this investigation that’s publicly available. It is unclear how tighter oversight of China’s AI industry might affect Moonshot’s valuation or timeline.
Deliberations are ongoing, and the timing could still change, the people said. Moonshot representatives did not respond to Bloomberg’s requests for comment during a Chinese public holiday. Therefore, the company’s IPO plans should not be treated with certainty until official confirmation arrives.
