Moonshot AI, the Beijing start-up behind the Kimi family of AI models, has wrapped up its last private fundraising at a valuation of about US$50 billion and is preparing to sell shares in Hong Kong as soon as the first quarter of 2027, Bloomberg News reported on Oct. 6, citing people familiar with the matter.

The company is weighing an offering of up to US$5 billion, according to the report, as carried by The Edge Malaysia. That would be several times the roughly HK$4.35 billion (US$559 million) that rival Z.ai raised in its Hong Kong debut in January, according to The Bamboo Works, and a fresh test of how much public investors will pay for AI companies that are growing quickly but are not yet profitable.

Early-look meetings with prospective investors could start as soon as October, Bloomberg said. Deliberations are continuing and the timing could change. Moonshot did not respond to requests for comment made during a Chinese public holiday.

A Valuation That Has Climbed Quickly

The price tag marks a steep rise. A funding round over the summer valued Moonshot at US$31.5 billion, according to Bloomberg. The Bamboo Works, a publication that covers Chinese companies, reported that the start-up was worth US$4.3 billion in a round late last year.

Revenue has grown alongside the valuation. Moonshot's annual recurring revenue is about US$1 billion and is expected to reach US$2 billion by December, up from US$300 million in June, Bloomberg reported. The company released its Kimi K3 open model in July, and Bloomberg said the model comes close to leading systems from OpenAI and Anthropic on some measures.

Yang Zhilin, who taught at Tsinghua University and earlier worked at Meta and Google, set up Moonshot in early 2023. Alibaba, Tencent and 5Y Capital are among its investors.

Bank of America is the overall coordinator for the offering, with China International Capital Corp., Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs as sponsor banks, according to Bloomberg.

A Confidential Filing and a Regulatory Overhang

The listing has been in motion for weeks. Reuters reported on Sept. 3, citing three people with knowledge of the plans, that Moonshot had confidentially filed for a Hong Kong IPO, with one person putting the target at about US$3 billion. Chinese tech outlet LatePost was first to report the filing, according to Reuters.

Reuters also reported that Moonshot unwound its offshore incorporation and changed its domicile to mainland China before filing. The South China Morning Post, citing two people familiar with the matter, said the same day that the company was aiming for a listing as early as the first quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory approval and market conditions. Moonshot told the newspaper it does not comment on market rumors.

The amount under discussion has since grown from the roughly US$3 billion first reported to as much as US$5 billion.

Investors will also weigh the deal against an open regulatory question. China's Cyberspace Administration has opened an investigation into Moonshot and DeepSeek over user data that may have reached Anthropic's Claude models, The Information reported in September, according to TNW. The probe followed an Anthropic report accusing seven China-based labs of extracting Claude's output through fraudulent accounts.

No penalty has been announced, and Moonshot has not commented publicly on the probe. TNW noted that an open investigation could need to be disclosed in a listing document. Bloomberg said it was unclear how tighter oversight of AI might affect the valuation or the timetable.

Read-Across From Z.ai and MiniMax

Moonshot's pitch will be judged against two Chinese peers that listed in Hong Kong in January. Knowledge Atlas Technology, which trades as Z.ai and is also known as Zhipu AI, and MiniMax were both oversubscribed more than 1,000 times by retail investors, according to The Bamboo Works. Both remain loss-making.

In early September, Z.ai traded at about 577 times sales and MiniMax at about 175 times, according to the publication. It said a US$50 billion valuation for Moonshot would require a similarly rich multiple, sustained by continued triple-digit growth.

Share prices have been volatile. Z.ai's shares closed at HK$793 on Sept. 11, down 73% from an intraday peak on June 22, the South China Morning Post reported, though still close to seven times the January listing price.

The next markers for investors are whether early-look meetings go ahead this quarter, the valuation range the banks set, and whether the cyberspace regulator concludes its probe before a prospectus is made public.