Overwhelmed! Kimi K3 goes live and within 48 hours usage hits the cap; the Darker Side of the Moon temporarily pauses new subscriptions

Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI announced on its official X account @Kimi_Moonshot that it is suspending sales of new subscription plans for Kimi K3. The open-weight model with 2.8 trillion parameters launched last Friday, and within 48 hours the request volume had already approached the upper limit of the company’s existing GPU cluster capacity. The company described it as, “Our GPUs are handling all of this.” Existing paying users are not affected. At the same time, the company is seeking $2 billion in new funding, and is approaching Goldman Sachs and CICC to pave the way for a Hong Kong stock IPO.
(Background: Is Kimi K3 getting cheaper chips, but with hardware demand surging as efficiency rises?)
(Additional background: Before taking the lead, Kimi K3 topped the front-end code leaderboard and beat Claude Fable 5 in human blind tests)

Key summary

• Kimi K3 launches and overfills the GPU within 48 hours; Moonshot AI pauses new subscription sales
• K3 parameters of 2.8 trillion top the Arena front-end code leaderboard; weights released on 7/27
• Moonshot AI seeks $2 billion in new funding; a valuation round in June reached $30 billion

When a model is so popular, it can also become a headache. Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI recently announced on its official X account @Kimi_Moonshot that after the launch of its flagship model Kimi K3, demand far exceeded expectations. It paused the sale of new subscription plans, prioritizing the compute power it has for users who have already paid. According to the South China Morning Post, the company said that the request volume over the past 48 hours has already nearly reached the upper limit of the capacity of its existing cluster.

Moonshot AI’s announcement was very direct.

The love we received for Kimi K3 far exceeded our expectations; our GPUs are handling all of this. Over the past 48 hours, demand has already approached the extreme limit of our current capacity. To protect the experience of existing subscribers, we are temporarily stopping new subscriptions.

It’s not very common for a company building cutting-edge models to openly admit it got “blasted” by users.

Kimi K3 officially launched last Friday (7/17). With a total of 2.8 trillion parameters, it is currently the largest open-weight model by scale. On Arena.ai’s front-end code leaderboard, it topped the chart with 1,679 points, taking six first-place results across seven sub-segments, pushing Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol behind. Full weights are expected to be released on 7/27.

Subscriptions split into two parts

In addition to pausing new customers, Moonshot AI also announced splitting memberships into two types. One is Kimi Membership, covering web, app, and office scenarios; the other is Kimi Code Membership, dedicated specifically to handling software development workflows. The company’s stated reason is to distribute compute more evenly, and to keep the user experience stable.

Money runs faster than the servers

While compute is tight, Moonshot AI’s capital moves have not stopped. According to Bloomberg, the company is seeking up to $2 billion in new funding. Its valuation for the June round was about $30 billion. The company has already enlisted Goldman Sachs and China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC) as financial advisers, and it is also dismantling overseas structures to clear the way for a Hong Kong listing, with the timeline still subject to change.

In the May 2025 funding round, Moonshot AI raised more than $2 billion from Meituan, China Mobile, and CPE. Its cumulative fundraising has already exceeded $5.5 billion. Founder Yang Zhilin previously said it has cash in excess of 10 billion yuan (about $1.4 billion), so it is not in a rush to list.

Frequently asked questions

Why did Kimi K3 pause new subscriptions?

Because of insufficient compute—not because the model has problems. Moonshot AI said that within 48 hours of K3’s launch, the request volume had already approached the upper limit of its existing GPU capacity. To preserve the experience of existing subscribers, it paused new customers and will reopen slots in batches later.

When will Kimi K3’s open weights be released?

Moonshot AI expects to release the full weights on 7/27. With a total of 2.8 trillion parameters, it is the largest open-weight model by scale. However, local deployment requires more than 64 GPUs and 45kW of power; for most users, it still means going through the cloud API.