Moonshot AI, the Chinese artificial intelligence developer, has closed its final private funding round at a valuation of about $50 billion and is heading for an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong in the first quarter of next year, according to The Information.
The Beijing-based company is preparing early-look meetings to gauge investor appetite, which could begin as soon as this month.
It is considering raising up to $5 billion, in what would be one of the most closely watched deals in a city where AI-driven fundraising is setting records.
The valuation is a sharp step up from the $31.5 billion placed on the company in a round this summer.
Annual recurring revenue (ARR), a gauge of future sales, is expected to double from $1 billion to $2 billion by December, having stood at $300 million in June.
Moonshot came to global attention in July with Kimi K3, an open model that rivals leading systems from OpenAI and Anthropic on some measures.
Bank of America is the coordinator for the deal, working alongside sponsor banks China International Capital Corp, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, the report revealed.
The company has filed confidentially for the listing. The timetable could still change while deliberations continue.
Regulators have also opened a data-security probe into Moonshot and its rival DeepSeek, and it is unclear how tighter scrutiny of China's AI industry might affect the valuation or the schedule.
Founded in early 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a former Tsinghua University professor who worked at Meta Platforms and Google, the company counts Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings and 5Y Capital among its backers.
