Moonshot AI, one of China’s top large language model developers, is set to increase its valuation to $4.8 billion via a new round of funding, just weeks after closing on a $500 million raise.

The news comes via CNBC, which cited two anonymous sources as saying that the round, which is still under discussion but expected to close imminently, will value Moonshot AI at least $500 million higher than the figure quoted in December, following its previous raise. The sources expect the round to close very soon thanks to “high demand.”

The startup, officially known as Beijing Moonshot AI Technology Co. Ltd., is one of China’s “AI Tigers,” together with other leading model makers such as MiniMax and Z.ai. The name likens the group to the high-growth economies of the four “Asian Tigers” – Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

Like its rivals, Moonshot AI is striving to compete with U.S. model makers such as OpenAI Group PBC, Anthropic PBC and Google LLC. They’re all developing foundation models that they claim could one day achieve artificial general intelligence, or AI systems that exceed the cognitive abilities of humans.

Moonshot AI is best known for its flagship AI model Kimi K2 Thinking, which launched in December as the default engine in its Kimi chatbot tool. Kimi 2 Thinking is one of the world’s best-performing open-weight LLMs, ranking higher than both OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 on a number of leading AI benchmarks. The 1 trillion-parameter model was designed as a “thinking agent” that can reason about problems in a step-by-step way and use third-party software such as browsers, search engines and data retrieval tools to execute tasks on behalf of users.

Since Moonshot AI’s last funding round in December, its two main rivals have both raked in millions of dollars after going public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The first to do so was MiniMax, which raised $619 million through its initial public offering, with Z.ai following just two days later, raising $560 million. Both stocks have surged since their market debut, with MiniMax’s value soaring to about $15.2 billion and Z.ai’s to about $13 billion, sparking greater interest in Moonshot AI’s plans.

However, unlike its rivals, Moonshot AI has resisted the lure of the public markets. Following its previous round, founder and Chief Executive Yang Zhilin insisted that it has no plans to launch an IPO in the short term. Instead, he seems happy to make do with private funding for now, and CNBC’s sources said the company could follow up with subsequent rounds in the coming weeks and months.

China’s AI Tigers have grown phenomenally over the last couple of years because American chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini aren’t available in the country, in line with Beijing’s policies that restrict access to many U.S.-based internet services. American companies also face significant restrictions when trying to do business in China, which has instead given birth to its own massive technology industry, led by names such as Alibaba, Tencent Corp. and Baidu Inc. The former two tech giants have both invested in Moonshot AI via earlier rounds.

Image: Moonshot AI