ChatGPT

The artificial intelligence industry is in the middle of a full-blown gold rush. Yet even against this backdrop, the latest news from China is making traders and venture capitalists around the world raise their eyebrows. Moonshot AI—a company that, until recently, was barely known outside Beijing and Shenzhen—is reportedly in talks to raise up to $2 billion in a new funding round. What makes this remarkable is that the startup has already secured funding in two previous rounds... within the last six months.

Just think about the numbers. Moonshot AI wants investors to value the company at $30 billion. Thirty billion dollars. That’s more than the market capitalization of many public companies that have been operating profitably for decades. Moonshot, meanwhile, is still a startup. It has a chatbot called Kimi, a team of talented engineers, and plenty of ambition. But a $30 billion valuation is a serious statement.

And that’s only part of the story. According to Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter, Moonshot is already close to completing another funding round led by Meituan, China’s delivery and services giant. That round is expected to value the company at around $20 billion after the deal closes. The subsequent round now under discussion would push the valuation even higher—to $30 billion.

In other words, Moonshot’s valuation could increase sevenfold in just a matter of months compared to last December, when the startup was valued at slightly over $4 billion. A sevenfold increase in half a year would have looked extreme even during the dot-com bubble. Yet in today’s AI market, almost nothing seems impossible.

Behind all this money stands a product. Moonshot AI’s flagship offering is a chatbot...