China’s Moonshot AI Confidentially Filed Hong Kong IPO

China’s Moonshot AI has confidentially submitted an application for an initial public offering to Hong Kong’s stock exchange, people familiar with the matter said.

The Beijing-based artificial-intelligence startup’s latest private funding round values it at $50 billion, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Moonshot declined to comment on the IPO plan. Chinese tech-focused publication LatePost and Reuters had previously reported on the confidential IPO filing.

A rising star on China’s increasingly competitive AI scene, Moonshot jolted the industry in July with its new large-language model Kimi K3, whose performance rivals that of some top-tier American offerings.

If successful, the listing, which is subject to approval by Chinese regulators, could become one of the largest IPOs in Hong Kong in recent years.

Chinese AI companies have accelerated fundraising activities following the IPOs of two AI model developers, Z.AI and MiniMax, in Hong Kong in January. Another high-profile startup, DeepSeek, is seeking a listing next year in Shanghai, and was valued at around $74 billion in its latest funding round, the Journal reported last month.

Founded by Yang Zhilin in 2023, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and China’s Tsinghua University, Moonshot counts HSG, Alibaba and Tencent among its investors.