A Free, Open Chinese AI Just Matched America's Best — and Got So Popular It Had to Lock Its Doors
About This Episode
Chinese lab Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, an open-weight model it calls 'Open Frontier Intelligence' that rivals OpenAI and Anthropic at a fraction of the cost. It became the first Chinese model to top a major coding benchmark, and demand was so high that Moonshot had to gate new users because its GPUs were overwhelmed.
Our Take
When the best intelligence becomes a free file anyone can download, the moat isn't the model — it's a reminder that you can't embargo abundance, and the real fight shifts from who builds the smartest AI to who captures the value once it's basically free.
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