Moonshot AI is in early talks with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to host its Kimi K3 model on their clouds under revenue-sharing deals that could give Moonshot up to 30% of the revenue those services generate. K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter open-weight model, is too compute-intensive for most organizations to self-host, so cloud distribution matters despite its open license. Key unresolved issues include the revenue split, data access provisions, and how token usage would be audited, complicated by data-privacy concerns given Moonshot is a Chinese company. Politics loom large: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has floated blacklisting Moonshot over allegations of model distillation and illegal chip acquisition, which Moonshot denies. The timing matters commercially for Moonshot, which is preparing a Hong Kong listing at a $30bn valuation after a sevenfold rise in six months.
