Kimi
Moonshot AI's chatbot and large language model series — from the first 128K-context model in 2023 to the 2.8-trillion parameter Kimi K3 released in July 2026.
Kimi is an AI chatbot and large language model series developed by Moonshot AI, a Chinese company founded in March 2023. The first version launched in October 2023 and was notable for supporting up to 128,000 tokens of context at a time when most models offered only 4K-32K. By July 2026, Kimi had evolved into a 2.8-trillion parameter model (Kimi K3) that ranked #3 worldwide on the Artificial Analysis AI leaderboard.
Kimi is both a consumer chatbot (available on web, iOS, and Android) and a family of large language models. Key Moonshot AI innovations include ultra-long context windows, the Kimi Delta Attention mechanism for efficient long-context processing, and the OK Computer agentic AI feature capable of creating websites and slides from prompts.
History
Moonshot AI was founded in March 2023 in China. In October 2023, the company officially released the Kimi chatbot and began closed-beta testing. On November 16, 2023, Kimi was released to the general public based on the Moonshot model — the first AI model capable of supporting 128K token context windows.
In March 2024, Moonshot AI began closed beta testing of an updated Kimi with a 2 million character context window. By October 2024, monthly active users had exceeded 36 million. The Kimi Explore Edition launched in October 2024 with AI-powered autonomous search capabilities.
January 2025 — Kimi K1.5 was released, matching OpenAI o1 in mathematics, coding, and multimodal reasoning. July 2025 — Kimi K2, a 1 trillion parameter MoE model, was open-sourced under a modified MIT license. September 2025 — Moonshot added the OK Computer agentic AI feature. January 2026 — K2.5 with multimodal vision-language understanding. April 2026 — K2.6. June 2026 — K2.7 Code. July 16, 2026 — Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion parameter model, ranking #3 worldwide.
Model Versions
| Version | Date | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Kimi (original) | Oct 2023 | 128K context, first of its kind |
| K1.5 | Jan 2025 | Matched o1 in math/coding |
| Kimi-VL | Apr 2025 | Open source 16B MoE vision-language model |
| Kimi-Dev | Jun 2025 | 72B coding model based on Qwen2.5 |
| K2 | Jul 2025 | 1T params MoE, 32B active, open weights |
| Kimi Linear | Oct 2025 | 48B MoE with Kimi Delta Attention (KDA) |
| K2.5 | Jan 2026 | Multimodal vision-language + agentic |
| K2.6 | Apr 2026 | Updated 1T MoE |
| K2.7 Code | Jun 2026 | Coding-optimized variant |
| K3 | Jul 2026 | 2.8T params, #3 globally on leaderboard |
Kimi K3
Kimi K3, released on July 16, 2026, is Moonshot AI's most powerful model yet with 2.8 trillion parameters. Upon release, it debuted at #3 on the Artificial Analysis AI leaderboard, behind only Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol. Notably, K3 outperformed competitors on Arena.ai's front-end web development benchmark, demonstrating particular strength in code generation and web development tasks.
Moonshot AI announced that it would release the weights for Kimi K3 by July 27, 2026 — just 11 days after launch — maintaining its commitment to open-source AI development. This rapid release cadence (K2 to K3 in one year) showcases Moonshot AI's aggressive development pace in the competitive Chinese AI landscape.
Open Source Contributions
Moonshot AI has made several significant open-source contributions to the AI community:
- Kimi-VL (April 2025) — 16B MoE vision-language model with 3B active parameters under MIT License
- Kimi-VL-Thinking (June 2025) — reasoning variant of Kimi-VL
- Kimi-Dev (June 2025) — 72B coding-focused model based on Qwen2.5-72B
- Kimi K2 (July 2025) — 1T MoE model under modified MIT License, a landmark open-weight release
OK Computer Agent
In September 2025, Moonshot AI added an agentic AI feature to Kimi called OK Computer (named after the Radiohead album). This feature enables Kimi to:
- Create multi-page websites from simple user prompts
- Generate editable slides and presentations
- Process up to 1 million rows of input data at once
- Output text, audio, images, and video
- Act autonomously to complete multi-step tasks
Pricing
Kimi apps are free to use with general rate limits. Moonshot AI offers four subscription plans named after musical tempo markings:
- Moderato — basic tier with standard K2 model access
- Allegro — higher usage limits, K2 Turbo access (faster hardware)
- Allegretto — extended access to Kimi Researcher and OK Computer
- Vivace — maximum tier with fastest slide generation and priority access
Comparison with Alternatives
| Aspect | Kimi K3 | DeepSeek V4 | GPT-5.6 Sol |
|---|---|---|---|
| Developer | Moonshot AI (China) | DeepSeek (China) | OpenAI (US) |
| Parameters | 2.8T (32B active) | 1.6T | Unknown |
| Global Rank | #3 (Jul 2026) | Top 10 | #2 |
| Open Weights | Yes (K3 planned) | Yes | No |
| Context | 128K+ | 1M tokens | 128K |
| Agentic AI | OK Computer | DeepSeek Agent | Operator |
Verdict
Kimi represents the rapid ascent of Chinese AI on the global stage. From its pioneering 128K context window in 2023 to the 2.8-trillion parameter K3 ranking #3 worldwide in 2026, Moonshot AI has demonstrated extraordinary development speed. Its combination of open-weight releases, ultra-long context, and agentic AI features (OK Computer) makes it a formidable competitor to both DeepSeek and Western frontier models. For developers seeking a powerful, open alternative with strong coding and agentic capabilities, Kimi K3 is one of the most compelling options available in mid-2026.