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Model details

Kimi K3 (Alibaba Cloud)

Kimi K3 is a 2.8 trillion-parameter Mixture-of-Experts language model developed by Moonshot AI, with parameters activated sparsely so the model can deliver a large overall capacity without paying the full inference cost on every token. The architecture is built on Kimi Delta Attention and Attention Residuals, paired with a Stable LatentMoE framework that activates 16 of 896 experts per pass, which Moonshot credits with roughly a 2.5x improvement in scaling efficiency compared with its predecessor. These structural changes, combined with refined training and data recipes, let the lab convert compute into capability more effectively, an important consideration for a team working under tighter hardware constraints than many Western competitors.

The model was announced on July 16, 2026 and its open-weight files followed on July 27, 2026, making it the strongest openly available release at the time. Independent evaluations place it near the top of language and coding leaderboards, including a second-overall position on the Vals AI index, third on Artificial Analysis (only behind Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol, and at a lower price), and first on Frontend Code Arena. Practically, Kimi K3 is aimed at developers and organizations that want frontier-class reasoning, long-context handling, and customization freedom without being locked into a single provider, while still offering a hosted API for teams that prefer managed serving.

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Quick Info

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LLM Gateway
Model key
alibaba/kimi-k3
Release date
Jul 16, 2026
Last updated
Jul 16, 2026
Input modalities
Output modalities
Capabilities

Cost

Input token cost
$3.00
Output token cost
$15.00

Limits

Output tokens
1,048,576 tokens
Context window
1,048,576 tokens

Transparent token rates

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Rates are shown per one million tokens. Combined means one million input plus one million output tokens.

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Latest news about Kimi K3 (Alibaba Cloud)

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Coverage

Lawfare reports that Moonshot AI announced Kimi K3 on July 16, 2026, with the weights released on July 27, 2026, placing the model within roughly one generation of U.S. frontier systems on independent measures. The article frames the release as a flashpoint in an emerging U.S.–China "open-weight diplomacy" contest over It documents the U.S. policy response, including reports that the Trump administration is weighing Entity List designations for Moonshot AI and an executive order that would make U.S. companies liable for hosting Chinese models, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent indicating sanctions are "on the table." It also note

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Coverage

On July 16, 2026, Moonshot AI announced Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model, with the open-weights release scheduled for July 27, 2026. Analyst Nathan Lambert (Interconnects AI) treats K3 as a true frontier model and the strongest open model released since DeepSeek R1, noting that either the open Benchmark positioning cited in the article places K3 at #2 on the Vals AI index, #3 on Artificial Analysis's Intelligence Index (behind only Claude Fable and GPT-5.6 Sol Max while being cheaper), and #1 in the Frontend Code Arena. The piece frames K3 as a Chinese lab executing on known scaling levers (data, algorithms,

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Coverage

On July 27, 2026, Moonshot AI declared "Kimi K3 Open Day" and released the full open weights eleven days after the July 16 launch. The 2.8-trillion-parameter checkpoint is downloadable from Hugging Face at moonshotai/Kimi-K3 in native MXFP4 safetensors, with the released files measuring 1.56 TB. The model was quantizat The Open Day bundle includes the complete technical report, inference code, and three training-infrastructure projects: MoonEP (balanced expert-parallel training), FlashKDA (the KDA kernel stack), and AgentEnv (agent training environments). The tech report covers the KDA and Gated MLA architecture mixed at a 3:1 ratio,

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Coverage

CNBC reported on July 17, 2026 that Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K3, China's largest AI model to date at 2.8 trillion parameters, with the company stating that K3 trails Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT 5.6 Sol on overall performance but consistently outperforms other tested models, including beating Claude Opu Bank of America analysts (note led by Alex Liu) commented that despite persistent hardware and compute constraints in China, K3 shows that pre-training scaling paired with architectural innovation can still deliver step-change gains for flagship Chinese models. The story situates the release within an intensifying U.S.

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CoverageRelease Notes

Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 on July 16, 2026, marking what the company calls the largest open-source AI model to date. According to VentureBeat's coverage, K3 is a 2.8-trillion-parameter model that benchmarks show performs competitively with leading proprietary systems from Anthropic and OpenAI. The release was timed The article details K3's architectural foundations: it features a 1-million-token context window, native visual understanding capabilities, and an always-on "thinking mode" reasoning setting. Two key innovations developed internally at Moonshot underpin the model: Kimi Delta Attention, a hybrid linear attention mechani

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CoverageBenchmark

The release tracker confirms Kimi K3 as an open-weight Moonshot AI model launched on July 16, 2026, arriving 34 days after Kimi K2.7 Code. It is a 2.8-trillion-parameter model with a 1-million-token context window, and Moonshot states the model always reasons. Benchmark coverage spans DeepSWE 1.0, BullshitBench v2, Dee API pricing is verified at $3.00 per million input tokens, $0.30 per million cached input tokens, and $15.00 per million output tokens, cross-checked against platform.kimi.ai on August 18, 2026. The entry provides a clean, verifiable snapshot of K3's core specs and pricing independent of launch-day marketing coverage,

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CoverageBenchmark

Moonshot AI published full Kimi K3 open weights on July 27, 2026, eleven days after the model's initial release in the Kimi app. The Hugging Face repository carries 96 safetensors shards totaling roughly 1.56 TB, making K3 the largest open-weight model released to date at 2.8 trillion total parameters with 104 billion The article confirms a Mixture-of-Experts design with a 1,048,576-token context window and multimodal support for text, image, and video input. Official API pricing stands at $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens, with cached input priced at $0.30 per million tokens. K3 scores 57 on the Ar

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