China's Moonshot AI chases 'DeepSeek moment' with much-hyped model

SHANGHAI: A model released on Friday (Jul 17) by Chinese startup Moonshot AI has fuelled buzz around the country's tech prowess, as experts said it could rival some of the more advanced offerings from United States labs.Large language models underpin chatbots and other artificial intelligence tools with their ability to crunch huge amounts of digital data.Moonshot AI's "Kimi K3" is one of several from China growing in global popularity thanks to their lower costs and source code that programmers can customise.Soon after its launch, Kimi K3 had topped a leaderboard for AI coding run by a platform called Arena created by UC Berkeley researchers. That drew excitement from industry insiders, with some evoking a 2025 release from China's DeepSeek that shook assumptions of US dominance in AI."Ki