Moonshot AI has opened preliminary discussions with Microsoft, Amazon and Google about running its Kimi K3 model on Azure, AWS and Google Cloud, and is seeking as much as 30 per cent of the revenue generated by K3-powered services on those platforms, according to a Reuters account republished by Blockonomi on 26 August 2026. MSN also carried the report. If any agreement were signed, it would be the first significant revenue-sharing arrangement between a Chinese artificial intelligence developer and the largest American cloud providers.
What has been reported
Citing multiple people with knowledge of the negotiations, the report says the talks are at a preliminary phase and that there is no certainty binding contracts will follow. The main sticking points are said to be profit distribution, data governance and the tracking of token consumption, the metering that would determine how revenue is counted. None of the four companies involved would comment.
Moonshot has used this commercial structure before inside China. Chinasoft International, a Chinese IT services provider, publicly acknowledged a revenue-sharing partnership with Moonshot in July 2026, although the financial terms were not disclosed.
Why an open-weight model still needs the cloud
Kimi K3 is an open-weight system with 2.8 trillion parameters, which Moonshot describes as the largest publicly accessible model in the world. Open weights mean anyone may download and modify the model, but industry observers note that most enterprise users are expected to reach K3 through hosted cloud services, because the computing infrastructure needed to run a model of that size locally is prohibitively expensive. That dynamic gives Moonshot a reason to monetise hosting even though the weights themselves are free.
Benchmark placement helps explain why American platforms might be interested. Arena.ai evaluation metrics put K3 first on tests of web interface generation, and Artificial Analysis places its performance alongside OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8.
The political backdrop
The commercial talks sit inside an escalating dispute. In July 2026, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent indicated the administration might designate Moonshot for trade restriction measures, and White House science advisor Michael Kratsios publicly claimed Moonshot built Kimi K3 through what he called industrial distillation of Anthropic's Fable model. American officials have also alleged that the company obtained Nvidia computing hardware without authorisation.
None of these allegations has been proven in public. Moonshot categorically denies the distillation claim and attributes K3's capabilities to proprietary architectural innovation. The company maintains a computing partnership with Alibaba covering roughly 20,000 Nvidia processors, and reports suggest it has explored acquiring Nvidia's next-generation Blackwell systems for future model development. Any Treasury designation would complicate, and possibly block, the very hosting contracts now under discussion.
Funding and a possible listing
Moonshot was founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a Carnegie Mellon-trained researcher, and counts Alibaba among its backers. In July 2026 the company closed a funding round that valued it at 35 billion dollars and raised 3.5 billion, above an initial target of one to two billion. It is now reported to be pursuing a further round at a 50 billion dollar valuation ahead of a possible initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, potentially before the end of 2026.
What is established and what is merely claimed
Established: Kimi K3's published specifications and benchmark placements; the July 2026 funding round and valuation; Chinasoft International's acknowledged revenue-sharing partnership; the fact that Reuters reported the cloud talks and that the report circulated on 26 August 2026; and the fact that Bessent and Kratsios made their statements.
Reported but not confirmed: the existence and terms of the talks themselves, including the 30 per cent figure, which rest on unnamed sources. Moonshot, Microsoft, Amazon and Google all declined to comment, and no contract has been announced. No company named in the reporting should be treated as a committed partner of any other.
Merely claimed: the allegation that Moonshot distilled Anthropic's Fable model, the allegation of unauthorised Nvidia procurement, and Moonshot's counter-claim of purely proprietary development. None has been independently verified. The reported 50 billion dollar valuation target and the Hong Kong listing are intentions, not events.