Moonshot's Kimi K3 is ready for public download after spooking OpenAI and Anthropic

China's Moonshot AI is set to release the Kimi K3 AI model for download today. That is, you will soon be able to download the AI model and run it locally on your device. This comes at a time when US companies have found themselves at crossroads over supporting access to such open-weight models.Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 can almost match the performance level of Claude Fable or GPT-5.6 (Representational image made with AI).A few days ago, China’s Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, the largest open-weight model ever, with a 2.8 trillion parameter set. Kimi K3’s release has already sparked debate within Silicon Valley as it closes the gap to the best AI models from US companies – Anthropic’s Claude Fable and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol. And now, Moonshot AI is going to make Kimi K3 available for download.At the time of the Kimi K3 launch announcement on July 16, Moonshot AI stated that Kimi K3’s open weights will be made public on July 27.Run Kimi K3 locallyTo give you some context, open-weights refers to the set of parameters that have been used to train an AI model – Kimi K3 in this case.That is, once the open weights are available for download, you can run Kimi K3 locally on your device and modify it according to your needs, without having to worry about token costs. The same token costs that have made big companies like Uber and Walmart to rethink how their employees use AI tools like Claude Code. Since Kimi K3 is a large model with over 2.8 trillion parameters, you will likely need enterprise-grade infrastructure to run it as opposed to just your laptop. Do note that at the time of writing, the open weights were not available to download via the official Moonshot AI website just yet.OpenAI and Anthropic spooked?The release of Kimi K3’s open weights comes amid a wider rift in Silicon Valley as Chinese AI models become better. As models like Kimi K3 and Zai’s GLM 5.2 come closer to US frontier models, the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic may have started to worry, since these Chinese models are much cheaper to run for a user. As per a report from the New York Times, Anthropic and OpenAI have been lobbying the Trump administration to place tighter restrictions on Chinese open-weight AI models. The US startups claim that Chinese models could be a cause of concern when it comes to intellectual property theft and national security.Keep in mind that Anthropic has previously accused Chinese AI labs of distilling its AI models to train their own. Distillation essentially refers to the process when a smaller AI model learns by studying the responses of a larger AI model.White House advisor Michael Kratsios has also accused Moonshot AI of distilling Anthropic’s models to train Kimi K3.At the same time, there are some that have openly supported open-weight AI models. On July 24, 25 tech companies in the US signed a joint letter titled “Open Weights and American AI Leadership”, asking Washington to avoid premature restrictions on downloadable AI models.Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, IBM, Dell, and Palantir were among the signatories. Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, who had not posted on X before, used his first post on the platform to share the letter. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman signed the letter after it became public, as the number of signatories grew to 50. Anthropic is still not among the signatories.Chinese open-weight models have gained popularity as they are much cheaper to run than closed AI models from the US. After the public release of Kimi K3, Moonshot AI had to stop new signups as its GPUs reached their usage limit.- EndsPublished By: Armaan AgarwalPublished On: Jul 27, 2026 08:34 IST