In a three-hour-long “ask me anything” session on Reddit on Monday evening, a Moonshot AI representative with the handle “ppwwyyxx” – the same moniker used by co-founder Wu Yuxin on X – said the company was “outnumbered” by rival US firms in terms of “high-end GPUs” used for AI model development.
That reflected how Chinese AI companies have been making the most of available resources on the mainland to create cutting-edge models, despite stringent US tech export restrictions.With Kimi K2 Thinking’s release last week, Moonshot AI – a unicorn valued at US$3.3 billion and backed by Chinese tech giants like Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings – ignited fresh debate about another “DeepSeek moment” in the global AI industry, while raising questions about recent efforts by OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman to secure more than US$1.4 trillion in infrastructure deals with the likes of Nvidia, Broadcom and Oracle.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Moonshot AI founder Yang Zhilin. Photo: Future Publishing via Getty Images