Kimi Kai 3... A Chinese AI model that rattles competitors in America

The new AI model Kimi Kai 3, launched by Chinese startup Moonshot AI on Friday, has garnered widespread admiration for its capabilities approaching the performance of the most advanced American AI systems, prompting calls in the United States to move quickly to keep pace with this development.

Since the launch of the V1 tool from Chinese company DeepSeek in December 2024, Chinese AI companies have been continuously reshaping the industry through open-source models that can be downloaded and modified, as well as being available for free.

These models partially reconsider the economic foundations of AI established by major Western companies, which are based on paid and closed models, according to AFP.

With Kimi Kai 3, a new level has been reached, particularly in terms of scale; it was created using 2.8 trillion parameters (adjustable standards), roughly double the size of DeepSeek V4 Pro, launched in April with 1.6 trillion parameters.

Moonshot AI boasts that its new model represents 'the upper limit in terms of the size of open models' in the AI field.

But what primarily caused surprise is the performance of Kimi Kai 3; AI models are now compared according to a wide range of benchmarks and specific tasks.

In this race, Kimi Kai 3 approaches advanced AI models such as Claude 5 from Anthropic and GPT-5.6 Soul from OpenAI in many aspects.

In some rankings, Moonshot AI's tool topped the list, particularly in the area of application or website programming, according to the ranking by the reference platform Arena AI.

In the current phase, code generation is the most prominent use of generative AI, a market currently dominated by Anthropic, while OpenAI continues to solidify its presence at an accelerating pace.

Alex Finn, head of the platform Henry Intelligent Machines BBC, said in a post on X that this will bring a radical and permanent shift in the AI race.

Exacerbation of geopolitical tensions

David Sacks, who oversaw the AI portfolio in the White House until March and remains an advisor to US President Donald Trump, said: "It's a cause for concern."

Sacks sees this new achievement as a Chinese victory in the conflict between China and the United States.

While China accelerates its progress, Sacks criticized what he described as 'the United States complicating matters,' saying: "Politicians and bureaucrats ban data centers, impose more laws and restrictions at the state level, and strive to give new federal agencies the authority to license the latest models."

Sacks points to the protest movement against building new data centers, as well as the Trump administration's retreat from its position, which now seeks to test the latest AI technologies before bringing them to market.

Dean Ball, former White House advisor on AI, believes that the success of the Chinese system is due to turning AI into a 'public utility' rather than a product; this will hinder progress and investment, as it will discourage the private sector from engaging.

Hussein Abbas, a professor of computer science at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia, says: "I'm not saying Americans should worry, but they also cannot remain idle."

Chinese AI models are attracting wide attention and increasing use in the West, and interest has renewed in recent months due to their lower average cost compared to advanced American models, at a time when AI prices are rising significantly.

The emergence of AI agents—programs capable of executing a series of tasks based on simple commands in everyday language, and even evaluating their performance and correcting their errors—has doubled the need for computing power and increased the cost of any project.

Some, including Gavin Baker from investment firm Attride Management, downplayed the impact of Kimi Kai 3, noting that initial tests showed it consumes a large amount of computing capacity, making it relatively expensive compared to an open-source model.

Anastasios Angelopoulos, CEO of Arena AI, believes that the surge in AI model capabilities will exacerbate geopolitical tensions.

He explained in an interview on the TITV podcast that this translates into Chinese restrictions on exporting its local models, or into the United States restricting the use of Chinese AI within its borders.

He said: "The intensity of competition between China and the United States is increasing, posing increasingly significant risks."