China's LLM API Calls Surpass the US! Kimi AI Parent Company's Latest Funding Valuation Reaches $18 Billion

Chinese AI Startups’ Dark Side of the Moon (Moonshot AI) is rapidly attracting attention from the capital markets. Bloomberg reports that this company, behind Kimi, is preparing for a new funding round of up to $1 billion, with a target valuation of approximately $18 billion.

Chinese LLMs are being driven by the lobster OpenClaw craze. According to OpenRouter data, recent Chinese LLMs are being called upon far more than U.S. LLMs. Chinese LLMs like MiniMax (HKG: 0100 Xi Yu Technology), Stepfun (Jieyue Technology), DeepSeek, and others are leading the pack, and Moonshot, seeking funding, is also on the list.

Bloomberg: Kimi’s parent company seeks $1 billion in funding at a $18 billion valuation

According to market sources, Moonshot AI has initiated negotiations for a new funding round, potentially raising up to $1 billion. If successful, the company’s valuation will reach $18 billion, a significant jump from three months ago.

Time Funding Situation Valuation End of 2025 Series C funding $500 million About $4.3 billion February 2026 New funding over $700 million About $10–12 billion Late February 2026 Foreign media reports valuation around $15 billion March 2026 Seeking a new round of up to $1 billion Target $18 billion

In other words, Moonshot AI’s valuation could grow more than fourfold in just three months, making it one of the fastest-growing companies in China’s generative AI sector.

Alibaba and Tencent continue to increase investments in Kimi

Moonshot AI’s investor lineup is quite impressive. Known shareholders include:

Alibaba Group

Tencent

5Y Capital

IDG Capital

Gao Rong Capital

Alibaba and Tencent have increased their stakes again in the $10 billion valuation round, indicating that major Chinese tech giants are accelerating their deployment of AI large model ecosystems.

OpenClaw ignites China’s AI Agent craze

Part of the market excitement comes from the recent popularity of open-source AI Agent OpenClaw. The project quickly sparked a wave of Agent applications among Chinese developers, prompting several cloud platforms and AI startups to launch compatible versions.

(China is hyping OpenClaw as the backbone of Web 4.0. Who is selling AI anxiety? Who profits from it?)

Moonshot AI also quickly followed up, launching Kimi Claw, powered by the latest Kimi K2.5 model. Insiders reveal that after the product launch, Moonshot’s monthly revenue has already exceeded last year’s total revenue, indicating that the Agent product is rapidly driving commercialization.

Chinese LLMs are being called upon more than U.S. companies

According to OpenRouter data, recent Chinese LLMs are being called upon far more than U.S. LLMs. Chinese LLMs like MiniMax (HKG: 0100 Xi Yu Technology), Stepfun (Jieyue Technology), DeepSeek, and others are leading the pack, and Moonshot, seeking funding, is also on the list.

Data source: OpenRouter

However, Chinese LLMs also face serious plagiarism accusations. In February this year, Anthropic accused Moonshot, MiniMax, DeepSeek, and others of extracting data from their Claude model outputs to train their own models. This technique is known as AI distillation.

Anthropic (Claude) accuses DeepSeek and three other Chinese AIs of bypassing chip restrictions through distillation

This article about Chinese LLM call volume surpassing the U.S. and Kimi AI’s parent company’s latest funding valuation reaching up to $18 billion first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.