What to know about Moonshot AI and its new open weight model Kimi K3

The release of the Chinese AI model Kimi K3 was a flashpoint in the AI world, sharpening the debate over whether the most capable models should be closely held by individual companies, usually U.S. tech firms, or freely and transparently distributed in the tradition of open-source software. Not only did the high-performing Kimi K3 challenge the cherished Silicon Valley notion that Western AI labs still lead their Chinese counterparts in large language models, though likely by only a hair, but…