Beijing-based AI startup Moonshot AI, founded by four Tsinghua University graduates, plans to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange before year's end, with investor talks expected to begin as early as August. The company, valued at $50 billion and staffed by just 300 employees, launched its Kimi K3 model earlier this month — reportedly the world's largest AI model at 2.8 trillion parameters — drawing comparisons to leading US systems from Anthropic and OpenAI. The IPO ambitions come amid mounting US scrutiny, with the White House accusing Moonshot AI of using banned Nvidia chips and of leveraging outputs from American AI models during training, raising the prospect of broader restrictions on Chinese AI access in the United States.