A little-known Chinese AI company recently released an open-source reasoning model that challenged Western dominance and was developed at a fraction of the cost. And no, it’s not DeepSeek.
When Moonshot AI, a Beijing-based lab, launched Kimi K2 Thinking earlier this month, it went viral in tech circles. A partner at prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm Menlo Ventures called it a “turning point in AI.” The model now ranks second on Artificial Analysis’ intelligence index, behind only OpenAI’s GPT 5.1 — and ahead of the latest offerings from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and DeepSeek, as well as US titans like X.AI and Anthropic. Looking at another benchmark measuring more complex, problem-solving “agentic” tasks, it even outperformed OpenAI.