Kimi K3, and what we can still learn
Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI announced Kimi K3 this morning, describing it as their "most capable model to date, with 2.8 trillion parameters". It's currently available via their website and API, but an open weight release is promised "by July 27, 2026". Moonshot are calling this the first "open 3T-class model" (I guess they're rounding 2.8 trillion up to 3 trillion), taking the crown from DeepSeek's 1.6T v4 Pro. Their self-reported benchmarks have K3 mostly beating Claude Opus 4.8 max and GPT-5.5 high, while losing out to Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol. A few highlights from the Artificial Analysis report on the model: "On our private long-horizon knowledge work evaluation, Kimi K3 reaches an overall Elo of 1547, +732 points from Kimi K2.6 and behind only Claude Fable 5." "Cost per task ($0.94) is similar to GPT-5.6 Sol ($1.04), ~1/2 the price of Opus 4.8 ($1.80) and higher than open weights peers" "Kimi K3’s token usage on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index decreased significa
What the video says
Moonshot AI is claiming the crown for the largest open-weight model by rounding up their brand-new release. The Chinese lab just announced QIMI K3, an industry-defining model boasting 2.8 trillion parameters.
It officially leapfrogs the field, taking the top spot from Deepseek's 1.6 trillion parameter model. This landmark release represents the first open 3 trillion class model, doubling the scale of previous Chinese technology.
On Artificial Analysis's private evaluation, KIMI K3 scored an ELO of 1547. That is an unprecedented jump of 732 points over their previous model.
This bleeding-edge performance sets a new bar, but it also comes at a massive premium. At $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output, it is the most expensive model ever released by a Chinese lab.
