Not the pinnacle of excellence, but the zenith of valuation.

Author: He Jian

Editor: Jiang Jiao

Cover Design: Big Shot

Similar to the ever-evolving rankings of large language models over the past four months, the financing amounts and market valuations of large model startups have been continuously pushing the boundaries of imagination.

Zhipu and Minimax, both of which made their debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange earlier this year, have witnessed a meteoric rise in their stock prices. Zhipu's stock price has soared more than sixfold, with its latest market capitalization surpassing that of Baidu—despite Zhipu's revenue last year being a mere 0.56% of Baidu's and still incurring significant losses, it has managed to outshine the established player.

Amidst this stock market surge, large model startups yet to go public have once again become the focal point of investors' scramble.

Yesterday (May 6), Kimi (Moonshot AI) was reported to be on the verge of completing a new round of financing worth $2 billion, with a post-investment valuation exceeding $20 billion, more than quadrupling in just six months. According to LatePost statistics, Kimi's cumulative financing to date has surpassed 37.6 billion yuan, making it the large model startup with the highest cumulative financing.

DeepSeek, which has just embarked on external financing, has seen its valuation double repeatedly in a matter of weeks. Initially rumored to be valued at $10 billion, DeepSeek's valuation doubled to $20 billion after Alibaba and Tencent joined the fray. Yesterday, foreign media reported that the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (known as the "National Big Fund") is in talks to invest in DeepSeek, with the latest valuation potentially reaching between $45 billion and $50 billion.

If all unfolds as anticipated, we may witness an unprecedented AI capital frenzy this year. Overseas, OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX (which has merged with xAI under Elon Musk) are all poised to go public this year, with a combined valuation exceeding $3 trillion. Domestically, following Zhipu and MiniMax's public debuts, there have been persistent market rumors that Kimi and StepFun are preparing for Hong Kong Stock Exchange listings.

However, this is far from the peak of the large model craze. Given the escalating computational expenses and Token consumption in the market, this financing war may have just commenced.

Unlisted Kimi Secures Additional Funding

Moonshot AI was once the most prominent large model startup in China, favored by industry giants and receiving investments from Meituan Dragon Pearl, Alibaba, and Tencent. It was also the most aggressive spender in the market, with monthly advertising expenditures once surpassing those of ByteDance's Doubao and Tencent's Yuanbao, dominating the advertising landscape.

However, after the emergence of DeepSeek-R1 in early 2025, Moonshot AI fell into a period of silence and hesitation. Its latest flagship model, Kimi K1.5, barely made a dent under DeepSeek's radiance, and its past reliance on advertising spending came under increasing scrutiny, with the market sounding a pessimistic note.

The past year has been a period of internal adjustment for Kimi. They paused their aggressive consumer-facing advertising strategy and refocused on algorithms and models, emphasizing open-source communities and model programming capabilities. Six months later, Kimi released and open-sourced its flagship model, Kimi K2, significantly enhancing its code and Agent capabilities, and regaining market recognition. Since the beginning of the year, the K2.5 and K2.6 models have continued to gain momentum, with revenue climbing amid the AI craze.

As model capabilities improved, the capital market also placed new bets. After completing a Series B round of over $300 million in August 2024, Kimi went 15 months without updating its financing. But on the last day of 2025, Kimi announced the completion of a $500 million Series C round, led by IDG, with oversubscription from existing shareholders including Alibaba, Tencent, and Wang Huiwen.

To some extent, DeepSeek's emergence has aided Chinese large model startups in finding differentiated competitive paths. Whether it's Zhipu, Minimax, or Kimi, none have followed in the footsteps of Doubao and others in the cutthroat competition for general AI assistants. Instead, they are competing on model code and Agent capabilities, leveraging open-source communities and overseas markets for growth.

LatePost quoted Wang Xinyu, a partner at Meituan Dragon Pearl, as saying that after the K2.5 model update, Kimi's Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) surpassed $100 million in early March this year and continued to grow to over $200 million in April. For comparison, as of March this year, Zhipu's MaaS platform ARR reached 1.7 billion yuan (approximately $250 million), a 60-fold increase year-on-year.

Although Kimi lags slightly behind Zhipu and MiniMax in terms of going public, due to the soaring stock prices of the latter two in the capital market, Kimi may be able to secure more funding in the primary market. Driven by FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), unlisted Kimi has become investors' last ticket to the AI boom. After all, you only appreciate what you've missed.

Since the beginning of the year, Kimi's financing process has accelerated significantly. LatePost reported that Kimi completed three rounds of financing in January and February this year (including the Series C round announced in late December), and with the latest $2 billion financing, the total raised in less than six months has exceeded $3.9 billion. In terms of cumulative financing, Kimi's over 37.6 billion yuan in funding has surpassed that of listed Zhipu and MiniMax in Hong Kong.

Even some non-leading large model startups have reaped significant rewards in this boom. In late February, Caijing reported that StepFun is undergoing a new round of Pre-IPO financing, which will be closed in two tranches, with a total financing amount of up to 3.2 billion yuan. Even so, relevant quotas are hard to come by, with many investors already queuing up.

The Financing War Among Large Model Companies Is Far from Over

Even though the financing amounts and valuations of Kimi and others have repeatedly hit record highs, this money may still not be sufficient to support future large model competition.

As model capabilities continue to advance, Token usage is also skyrocketing. According to National Bureau of Statistics data, China's average daily Token usage exceeded 140 trillion in March this year, a more than thousandfold increase in just two years.

Behind this explosive growth in Token usage, computational cost pressures have also surged. In March this year, China's three major cloud service providers—Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Baidu Intelligent Cloud—raised prices in succession within a week, with some models in Tencent Cloud's Hunyuan series seeing price increases of over 460%.

Since the beginning of the year, several large model companies have raised their API call prices. Kimi's latest K2.6 model has an input price (cache miss) of $0.95 per million Tokens, up about 58% from $0.60 for K2.5; the output price is $4, up about 33% from $3 for K2.5.

After releasing GLM-5.1 in April this year, Zhipu once again raised its input price (cache miss) by 10% per million Tokens. Zhipu CEO Zhang Peng stated in the first-quarter report that Zhipu's API call pricing increased by 83% in the first quarter, but demand still outstripped supply.

Capital expenditures among major internet giants have also increased significantly. Previously, media reported that ByteDance expects its capital expenditures this year to be around 160 billion yuan, with about half going toward AI chip procurement. Early last year, Alibaba announced that it would invest over 380 billion yuan in cloud and AI hardware infrastructure over the next three years, with the total investment exceeding the sum of the past decade. But just a few months later, Alibaba once again declared that it would continue to increase investment on this basis.

Not to mention the even more massive computational infrastructure construction plans of overseas giants like OpenAI, Meta, and Google. According to recent court testimony by OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman, OpenAI's computational spending will reach $50 billion this year, with planned cumulative computational investment reaching $600 billion by 2030. Meta has also significantly raised its capital expenditure expectations for the year, with full-year capital expenditures potentially reaching $145 billion, a record high.

Startups are feeling even greater computational pressure. According to financial reports previously released by Zhipu, over 70% of the company's research and development expenditures are spent on computational services. While large model companies are seeing revenue growth, their computational costs are also soaring.

The talent war in the large model market is also intensifying. Over the past year, DeepSeek's researchers have become sought-after by major internet giants, with team members continuously being poached. Previously, LatePost reported that ByteDance recruited former DeepSeek researcher Guo Daya with an annual salary of nearly 100 million yuan to lead Byte's Seed Agent team.

DeepSeek, which had previously shunned external financing, is now also trying to raise more funds. After news of DeepSeek's financing broke, the company's valuation continued to rise, with the latest valuation potentially reaching between $45 billion and $50 billion.

Even though Kimi founder Yang Zhilin has consistently claimed that the company is not in a hurry to go public, rumors about Kimi's listing seem to never cease. In March, Bloomberg reported that Kimi is considering a Hong Kong IPO and has had preliminary contact with CICC and Goldman Sachs about the listing plan. StepFun, which was reported to have started Pre-IPO financing in early February this year, is also rumored to be planning a Hong Kong listing within the year.

Zhipu, which has successfully listed in Hong Kong, is also advancing its A-share listing plan. According to previous information from the China Securities Regulatory Commission's website, Zhipu plans to list on the STAR Market, with CITIC Securities and CICC as its IPO advisors.

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