Kimi K3 went live on July 16, 2026 through Moonshot's API at kimi.com, the Kimi mobile apps, Kimi Work, and Kimi Code, with OpenRouter providing immediate access for users without a Moonshot account. The model is a 2.8-trillion-parameter multimodal system with native image and video input, a 1,048,576-token context win Independent benchmark results placed Kimi K3 fourth on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with a score of 57 out of 189 models, behind Claude Fable 5 and two GPT-5.6 Sol reasoning settings but ahead of Claude Opus 4.8, GPT-5.5 at xhigh, Claude Sonnet 5, and GLM-5.2; the model also topped the Arena.ai Code WebDe

Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 on July 16, 2026, a 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight model that the article describes as the largest open-weight AI system ever announced. The piece emphasizes that Kimi K3 launched at flagship pricing—$3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens—a deliberate break from t The deep dive benchmarks Kimi K3 against Claude Fable 5, GPT-5.6, and other frontier models, and it examines the economics of what happens when frontier-class capability ships with downloadable weights and a permissive license. An August 5 update corrects earlier claims that weights would ship under a Modified MIT lice

Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 debuted at the top of Arena's Frontend Code leaderboard, a result the MarketWatch coverage framed as evidence that the capability gap between U.S. and Chinese AI labs could be closing faster than expected. The 2.8-trillion-parameter model was announced as the world's largest open model, with weigh The launch contributed to a 1.4% drop in the Nasdaq Composite on Friday as markets weighed the implications of a Chinese model achieving frontier-class results with less compute than U.S. labs. Analysts drew parallels to the DeepSeek moment, noting that open models catching up in capability would put pricing pressure o