# Kimi K3

> **TL;DR.** Kimi K3 is Moonshot AI's flagship large language model, a 2.

- **Category:** AI / Frontier Models / Open-Weight LLMs
- **Stage:** nascent
- **Age:** 0 days
- **Origin date:** 2026-07-16
- **First detected:** 2026-07-16
- **Canonical URL:** https://earlyterms.com/term/kimi-k3
- **Sources:** 5 primary URLs

## Definition

Kimi K3 is Moonshot AI's flagship large language model, a 2.8-trillion-parameter sparse Mixture-of-Experts system using 16-of-896 sparse expert routing, Kimi Delta Attention, and a 1-million-token context window built for long-horizon agentic coding, web browsing, and knowledge work.

Moonshot went live on July 16, 2026 with [Kimi K3 in the Playground and API](https://platform.kimi.ai/docs/guide/kimi-k3-quickstart), the same week it closed a funding round reportedly valuing the company at $31.5B, up from $20B in May 2026. Open weights are due to follow "in the coming days."

## Analogy

Think of K3 as Moonshot swapping K2's single-lane highway for a 16-of-896-expert switchboard, routing each request down only the lanes it actually needs.

## Why it's emerging now

Moonshot AI put Kimi K3 live in its API and Playground on July 16, 2026, days after a leaked platform page tipped the launch, positioning the 2.8T-parameter MoE model as a direct challenger to Anthropic's Opus 4.8 while the company raises at a $31.5B valuation.

## Related terms

- *parent:* Kimi K2.7 Code
- *parent:* Kimi K2.6
- *competitor:* DeepSeek V4 Pro
- *competitor:* GLM-5.1
- *competitor:* GLM-5.2
- *competitor:* Qwen3.6
- *competitor:* Claude Opus 4.8
- *competitor:* GPT-5.6 Sol
- *competitor:* Opus Fable
- *related:* Agentic Coding
- *related:* Coding Agents
- *alias:* 月之暗面

## Sources

1. [Moonshot AI — Kimi K3 quickstart guide](https://platform.kimi.ai/docs/guide/kimi-k3-quickstart)
2. [Kimi Code docs — model tiers](https://www.kimi.com/code/docs/en/kimi-code/models)
3. [TechCrunch (citing FT) — Moonshot's upcoming Kimi 3 expected to close gap with Opus 4.8](https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/16/moonshots-upcoming-kimi-3-is-expected-to-close-the-gap-with-anthropics-opus-4-8/)
4. [Hacker News — Kimi K3 is now live](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48935342)
5. [r/LocalLLaMA — Kimi K3 released on web and app](https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1uy3a0q/kimi_k3_released_on_web_and_app/)

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