Moonshot AI, a Beijing-based startup backed by Alibaba, has seen a surge in adoption of its Kimi K2 AI model, launched on July 11, 2025.

Downloads jumped from 76,000 on July 18, to 145,000 by July 22, according to Hugging Face.

Kimi K2 is a large language model with 1 trillion total parameters and 32 billion activated per inference, using a mixture-of-experts (MOE) architecture similar to DeepSeek-V3.

Unlike OpenAI’s GPT or Anthropic’s Claude, Kimi K2 is free to use via app and browser. Its MOE design reduces computation costs and speeds up inference.

Moonshot AI said the model was developed at a much lower cost than typical large-scale AI models.

The launch has sparked discussion about the widening gap between open-source AI in China and the US.