Moonshot AI · 2026-05-07 · major
Moonshot AI Raises $2B at $20B Valuation — Kimi-Maker Doubles in 4 Months as K2.6 Climbs to #2 on OpenRouter
Beijing-based Moonshot AI closed a $2B round led by Meituan VC arm Long-Z Investment at a $20B valuation, doubling its January 2026 mark, with annualized revenue at $200M and Kimi K2.6 the #2 LLM on OpenRouter.
Moonshot AI just raised $2B at $20B — a 2x valuation jump in four months — on the back of Kimi K2.6's distribution surge.
Key specs
| Raise | $2B |
|---|---|
| Valuation | $20B |
| Valuation jan 2026 | $10B |
| Valuation end 2025 | $4.3B |
| Annualized revenue april | $200M |
| Lead investor | Long-Z Investment (Meituan) |
| Co investors | Tsinghua Capital, China Mobile, CPE Yuanfeng |
What is it?
Moonshot AI, the Beijing lab founded in 2023 by ex-Meta AI and Google Brain researcher Yang Zhilin, closed a $2B round led by Long-Z Investment, the venture arm of food-delivery giant Meituan. Tsinghua Capital, China Mobile, and CPE Yuanfeng are co-investors. The round values the lab at $20B post-money, up from $10B in January 2026 and $4.3B at the end of 2025.
How does it work?
The valuation step-up tracks two commercial signals. Moonshot's annualized recurring revenue hit $200M in April 2026, fed by paid Kimi subscriptions and growing API usage. Its open-weight Kimi K2.6 model is the second-most-used LLM on OpenRouter, behind only Anthropic's Claude family — a rare data point of a Chinese open-weight model with paid distribution outside the Chinese consumer market.
Why does it matter?
China now has two AI labs visibly priced above $20B (DeepSeek is in talks at $45B). The Long-Z lead — Meituan VC, not state capital — shows Chinese internet platforms are willing to underwrite frontier-scale training without waiting for the Big Fund. The deal cements an open-weight-plus-paid-API playbook other Chinese labs are imitating, and gives Moonshot the runway to scale K2.6's successor.
Who is it for?
AI-strategy watchers, open-weight users, China-tech investors