Archive · 31 Jul 2026
Moonshot AI Trains Kimi K3 on 20,000 Nvidia Chips
Moonshot AI is a Chinese company that made a new AI model called Kimi K3.
They used a huge number of Nvidia computer chips—about 20,000—to train it.
The model has 2.8 trillion parts, which is a lot of power.
Alibaba, a big Chinese tech company, owns a third of Moonshot and gave them the chips.
Some people think Moonshot might have used newer chips that the U.S. says they can’t use, which could be a problem with trade rules.
Moonshot AI trained Kimi K3 on a cluster of ~20,000 Nvidia H200 chips.
The model has 2.8 trillion parameters and was launched on July 17, 2024.
Alibaba owns about 36% of Moonshot and supplied the cloud infrastructure.
Kimi K3 outperformed Alibaba’s own Qwen AI models on several benchmarks.
U.S. officials suspect Moonshot may have illegally accessed Nvidia Blackwell chips.
- Who
- Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI and its backer Alibaba
- What
- trained the Kimi K3 model on 20,000 Nvidia chips
- When
- July 17, 2024
- Where
- China, using Alibaba cloud infrastructure
- Why
- to compete with US AI rivals amid export restrictions
- Model
- Kimi K3
- Parameters
- 2.8 trillion
- Training Chips
- 20,000 Nvidia H200
- Backer
- Alibaba (36%)
- Valuation
- $20-35 billion
- Launch Date
- July 17, 2024
- Export Concerns
- Possible illegal Blackwell chips