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Kimi developer Moonshot shows China’s growing AI depth: US government report
Washington’s evaluation highlights an increasing number of Chinese companies developing world-leading open-weight AI models, not just DeepSeek
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Leading Chinese artificial intelligence start-up Moonshot AI has been singled out as evidence of the “growing depth” of China’s AI industry, according to a new US government report.
An increasing number of Chinese companies were now developing world-leading “open-weight” AI models, not just DeepSeek, the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) at the Department of Commerce said on Friday.
The CAISI report was the second US government evaluation of a leading Chinese model developer, after US President Donald Trump called for official assessments of frontier Chinese models’ capabilities and censorship in his AI Action Plan, released in July.
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Its first report released in late September focused on DeepSeek, China’s most high-profile AI company, claiming that the Hangzhou start-up’s models posed risks to US national security while acknowledging their growing global popularity.
CAISI works directly with leading US firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic on AI safety and security issues.
Its latest evaluation targeted Moonshot’s flagship Kimi K2 Thinking model, released in November, which stunned the global AI community with its impressive writing skills and drew comparisons with January’s “DeepSeek moment” in terms of cost-efficiency.
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