Excitement is mounting in the AI research community over the emergence of a second high-performing artificial intelligence model from China.
On July 11, Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K2. It is a new model that the company claims matches or exceeds the performance of top Western AI systems. Even some of DeepSeek’s models, across multiple industry benchmarks.
Kimi K2 demonstrates strong capabilities in coding tasks, achieving impressive scores on evaluations. It include LiveCodeBench, a standard test for assessing code-related AI performance.
Kimi K2 is open-weight, allowing researchers to download, modify, and fine-tune the model without needing to train one from scratch. It is also available via an API at a fraction of the cost of proprietary models such as Anthropic’s Claude 4, based in San Francisco.
“This model is accessible to the community. It can be freely adapted and enhanced,” says Adina Yakefu, an AI researcher at Hugging Face, an open-science AI platform. Just one day after launch, Kimi K2 had already become the most rapidly downloaded model on Hugging Face, according to platform data. Yakefu described the release as “another ‘DeepSeek moment’”.
Most advanced AI models are trained as reasoners. They solve problems using step-by-step logic. Kimi K2 is different. It is built as an agentic large language model (LLM). This means it can handle complex, multi-step tasks. It also uses external tools like web browsers or math software to complete them.
Why Kimi K2 Matters in the Global AI Race
While some proprietary systems, including certain ChatGPT versions, already demonstrate this capability, Kimi K2 offers it in an open format. Researchers are still verifying whether it can reliably replicate the agent-like behaviors that Moonshot AI claims it can perform.
The launch of another powerful Chinese model within six months of DeepSeek’s R1 suggests a trend rather than an isolated success. “The DeepSeek R1 release earlier this year was more of a prequel than a one-off fluke in the trajectory of AI,” wrote Nathan Lambert. On social platform Bluesky, he called Kimi K2 “the new best open model in the world”.
Founded in March 2023, Moonshot AI was relatively unknown outside China until recently. Its earlier Kimi chatbot based on a previous version of its LLM, had already become China’s third most-used chatbot by November 2024.
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