Early talks with potential investors have begun, aiming to raise more than $1 billion, with a Meituan-led round potentially closing soon at about a $20 billion valuation.

If the round succeeds, Moonshot’s valuation would have more than tripled since December, when investors valued it at just over $4 billion.

Moonshot AI is pursuing as much as $2 billion in a new funding round that could push its valuation to around $30 billion, marking its third financing in six months as it races in China’s AI arena.

The discussions remain in an early stage and could change; spokespeople did not comment.

The restructuring aims to keep US-dollar access intact through a joint-venture setup for foreign investors while pursuing the Hong Kong offering.

Moonshot was founded by Yang Zhilin, a former Tsinghua professor with experience at Meta and Google, and sells tiered chatbot subscriptions while licensing technology to enterprises, having launched the general-purpose AI agent Kimi Work on the K2.6 model series.

Moonshot’s annual recurring revenue surpassed $200 million as of April, driven by demand for its Kimi chatbot and large language models.

ARR exceeded $200 million in April 2026, reflecting strong demand for chatbots and large language model offerings.

Deliberations are in preliminary stages and subject to revision; representatives declined to comment.

The company reported ARR above $200 million fueled by Kimi and its LLMs.

Moonshot is restructuring offshore arrangements to prepare for an IPO in Hong Kong amid Beijing’s tighter controls on overseas listings, while considering a joint-venture structure to accommodate foreign backers without losing access to US-dollar funds.

Offshore governance is being reorganized to enable a Hong Kong IPO, with Bloomberg noting a joint-venture approach to allow foreign investment while preserving access to dollar funding.