The same AI model that wiped billions off Nvidia's (NVDA) market value earlier this month has now made its own creator, Chinese startup Moonshot AI, worth $35 billion.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Moonshot closed a $3.5 billion funding round, far exceeding the $1 billion to $2 billion it initially targeted, as investors piled in following the launch of its Kimi K3 model, according to people familiar with the matter.
Moonshot released Kimi K3 earlier this month. The 2.8 trillion-parameter model was the largest open-weight AI system ever released, with performance approaching frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI at roughly half the API cost.
Chip stocks took a dive, with Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Broadcom (AVGO, and Micron (MU) taking some of the biggest hits. The drawdown has led to Nvidia as the world's most valuable company to Apple (AAPL) amid the selloff.
So far this month, Nvidia’s valuation has come down from a peak of over $5.1 trillion to around $4.7 trillion as of Tuesday’s close. edged higher in pre-market trade on Wednesday amid a broader recovery in the technology sector. The Nasdaq-100 tracking (QQQ) moved 0.24% higher. On Stockwits, retail sentiment around NVDA shares remained in ‘neutral’ territory over the past day, accompanied by chatter at ‘high’ levels.
Moonshot AI Reportedly Wants Nvidia's Blackwell Chips
The White House has accused Moonshot of training Kimi K3 on restricted Nvidia chips, obtained in violation of U.S. export controls, and reiterated allegations that the model was built in part through "distillation," extracting outputs from rival AI systems to boost its own performance.
According to a report by The Information, Moonshot AI is reportedly seeking greater access to Nvidia's Blackwell processors to train its next-generation Kimi K4 large language model, a successor to the recently launched Kimi K3.