--- title: Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican... description: Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion parameter model claiming to be the first open 3T-class model. It's priced at $3/million input and $15/million... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/kimi-k3-and-what-we-can-still-learn-from-the-pelican-benchmark-avvfo2ysr twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark | daily.dev og:description: Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion parameter model claiming to be the first open 3T-class model. It's priced at $3/million input and $15/million... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/kimi-k3-and-what-we-can-still-learn-from-the-pelican-benchmark-avvfo2ysr og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/AvvFO2YSr.png og:image:alt: Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark **[Simon Willison](https://daily.dev/sources/simonwillison)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion parameter model claiming to be the first open 3T-class model. It's priced at $3/million input and $15/million output tokens — the most expensive model from a Chinese AI lab to date — and leads Arena.ai's Frontend Code arena. Simon Willison tested it using his long-running 'pelican riding a bicycle' SVG benchmark, revealing that K3 only has one reasoning effort level (max), uses 13,241 reasoning tokens for a simple prompt, and appears to have an ~85-token hidden system prompt. The post also reflects on the benchmark's diminishing correlation to overall model quality after 21 months, while arguing it still provides useful signal: confirming API access, estimating cost, and testing basic SVG/spatial reasoning capabilities. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Everyone Read Kimi K3 as a Price War. It Is the Opposite.](https://daily.dev/posts/everyone-read-kimi-k3-as-a-price-war-it-is-the-opposite--xshhpdjyb) · Medium · 3 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#kimi](https://daily.dev/tags/kimi), [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#openrouter](https://daily.dev/tags/openrouter) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/kimi-k3-and-what-we-can-still-learn-from-the-pelican-benchmark-avvfo2ysr) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/kimi-k3-and-what-we-can-still-learn-from-the-pelican-benchmark-avvfo2ysr","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/kimi-k3-and-what-we-can-still-learn-from-the-pelican-benchmark-avvfo2ysr"},"datePublished":"2026-07-16T20:20:42.758Z","dateModified":"2026-10-14T02:32:06.555Z","description":"Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion parameter model claiming to be the first open 3T-class model. 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