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Moonshot AI Releases Kimi K3, a 2.8-Trillion-Parameter Open-Weight Model Targeting Frontier Coding and Vision

July 17, 2026 at 03:45 EDT

Foundation Models
Open Source
Software Dev & Coding

Chinese startup Moonshot AI has launched Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter multimodal model positioned as one of the largest open-weight systems yet built, claiming frontend-coding and visual-understanding performance that rivals leading closed models from U.S. labs. The model became available via API on July 16, 2026, with full weights slated to follow later in the month.

July 16, 2026 · Moonshot AI

Kimi K3: China's 2.8-Trillion-Parameter Bid for the Frontier

Moonshot AI's new multimodal model — billed as one of the largest open-weight systems ever built — claims frontend-coding and visual-understanding performance rivaling top U.S. closed models, at a fraction of the price.

2.8T

Parameters (Mixture-of-Experts); some reports cite 2.7T

Token context window, native vision

~57

Intelligence Index; ~42.0 on SWE Marathon

API Pricing — per million tokens

Cost as the key differentiator against U.S. closed frontier systems.

$0.30

Cache hit

Input

$15

Output

Strengths

Generated a macOS-style app interface — windows, animations, dock — from one prompt in ~15 min
Frontend & visual capabilities praised as among the strongest available
Near top of a frontend code arena

Trade-offs

Complex 3D physics (a pinball scene) stretched well beyond an hour
Surfaced physics and placement errors on heavy workloads
Longer inference times than rival systems

Access & What's Next

Now live →
API as kimi-k3, plus Kimi app & desktop client. OpenAI-SDK compatible.

Late July →
Full open weights to be published, keeping the open-weight positioning of the Kimi series.

The test →
Whether coding & vision claims hold across broader independent evaluations.

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