Chinese AI pioneer Moonshot unveiled a new model that it claims performs on par with some of the top-tier platforms from OpenAI and Anthropic, the latest sign that the Asian country’s artificial intelligence labs are closing a technology gap with the US.

Moonshot released Kimi K3 on July 17, touting benchmarks comparable to some of the US labs’ best offerings.

The model is open weight, meaning its parameters are available for users to download and customise, and outperforms all rivals except Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 on overall capability, it said.

Moonshot’s latest platform underscores how rapidly China’s AI race is evolving beyond a competition on price alone. Moonshot priced Kimi K3 at roughly Anthropic Sonnet levels, showing the company believes it can charge a premium to other Chinese models given its capabilities.

The start-up also claimed it surpasses local rival Z.AI’s most advanced offering on coding tasks. Those are among the most lucrative offerings by advanced model companies, driving revenue for Anthropic and OpenAI ahead of their planned initial public offerings (IPOs).

If Kimi can undercut them on price and achieve similar results, that could upend the business case for its rivals in the US and China.

Shares of its Chinese rival tumbled 28 per cent in their biggest slide since listing, while MiniMax Group slid 16 per cent.

The declines came amid a broader sell-off in Asian technology stocks, with investors concerned about whether a years-long AI-fuelled stock rally has become overstretched. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index closed down 1.5 per cent, finishing its worst week in almost a month.

The K3 model is “brilliant”, said Leonid Mironov, a portfolio manager at Gavekal Ca...