Investors can't wait for Kimi to go public.

Similar to the continuously refreshed leaderboards of large models in the past four months, the financing amounts and market values of large model startups are also constantly stretching people's imaginations.

At the beginning of the year, Zhipu and Minimax, which both went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, saw their stock prices soar. Zhipu's stock price has more than sextupled in total, and its latest market value has surpassed that of Baidu. Although Zhipu's revenue last year was only 0.56% of Baidu's and it is still in huge losses, it has still managed to outperform the established players.

As the stock market soars, those large model startups that have not yet gone public have once again become the focus of competition among investors.

Yesterday (May 6th), Kimi (The Dark Side of the Moon) was reported to be on the verge of completing a new round of financing worth $2 billion, with a post - investment valuation exceeding $20 billion. Its valuation has more than quadrupled in half a year. According to a late - breaking statistic, Kimi's cumulative financing to date has exceeded 37.6 billion yuan, making it the startup with the highest cumulative financing among large model startups.

The valuation of DeepSeek, which has just started external financing, has been doubling in just a few weeks. Initially, the rumored valuation of DeepSeek was only $10 billion. After Alibaba and Tencent entered the fray, its valuation doubled to $20 billion. Yesterday, foreign media reported that the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (referred to as the "National Big Fund") is in talks to invest in DeepSeek, and its latest valuation may reach $45 - 50 billion.

If nothing unexpected happens, we may witness an unprecedented capital frenzy in artificial intelligence this year. Overseas, OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX, which has merged with xAI under Elon Musk, will all go public this year, with a combined valuation of over $30 trillion. After Zhipu and MiniMax went public in the domestic market, there have also been repeated rumors that Kimi and Jieyue Xingchen are preparing to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

But this is far from the peak of the large model craze. Considering the increasingly huge computing power expenses and Token consumption in the market, this financing war may have just begun.

The Unlisted Kimi Has Raised More Money

The Dark Side of the Moon was once the most prominent large model startup in China. It was once favored by giants and received investments from Meituan Longzhu, Alibaba, and Tencent. It was also once the most profligate spender in the market, with its monthly advertising spending once exceeding that of ByteDance's Doubao and Tencent's Yuanbao, enjoying a moment of great glory.

However, after the emergence of DeepSeek - R1 in early 2025, The Dark Side of the Moon fell into a period of silence and indecision. At that time, its newly released flagship model, Kimi K1.5, made little splash in the shadow of DeepSeek. Its previous advertising - driven strategy was also widely criticized, and the market was full of pessimistic voices.

The past year was a year of internal adjustment for Kimi. They suspended their previous aggressive C - end advertising strategy and refocused on algorithms and models, attaching importance to the open - source community and model programming capabilities. Six months later, Kimi released and open - sourced its flagship model, Kimi K2, which significantly improved in code and Agent capabilities and regained market recognition. Since the beginning of the year, the K2.5 and K2.6 models have continued to be enhanced, and their revenue has been rising steadily during the "lobster craze".

As the model capabilities improved, the capital market also placed new bets. After completing a Series B financing of over $300 million in August 2024, Kimi did not have a new round of financing for a full 15 months. But on the last day of 2025, Kimi announced the completion of a $500 million Series C financing, led by IDG, with over - subscription from old shareholders such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Wang Huiwen.

To some extent, the emergence of DeepSeek has helped Chinese large model startups find a differentiated competitive path. Whether it is Zhipu, Minimax, or Kimi, they have not followed the old path of competing in general AI assistants like Doubao. Instead, they are competing in model code and Agent capabilities, and regaining growth through the open - source community and overseas markets.

Late - breaking news quoted Wang Xinyu, a partner at Meituan Longzhu, as saying that after the update of the K2.5 model, Kimi's ARR exceeded $100 million at the beginning of March this year and continued to grow to over $200 million in April. In comparison, as of March this year, the ARR of Zhipu's MaaS platform reached 1.7 billion yuan (approximately $250 million), a 60 - fold increase year - on - year.

Although Kimi lags slightly behind Zhipu and MiniMax in the listing process, due to the soaring stock prices of the latter two in the capital market, Kimi may be able to raise more funds in the primary market. Driven by the FOMO sentiment, the unlisted Kimi has become the last ticket for investors. After all, you only know how to cherish something after you've missed it.

Since the beginning of this year, Kimi's financing process has accelerated significantly. Late - breaking news reported that Kimi completed three rounds of financing intensively in January and February this year (including the Series C financing announced at the end of December), and with the latest $2 billion financing, the financing amount in less than half a year has exceeded $3.9 billion. In terms of cumulative financing, Kimi's financing of over 37.6 billion yuan has exceeded that of Zhipu and MiniMax, which are listed in Hong Kong.

Even some non - leading large model startups have also benefited a lot from this wave of craze. At the end of February, Caijing reported that Jieyue Xingchen is conducting a new round of Pre - IPO financing, which will be delivered in two installments, with a maximum total financing amount of 3.2 billion yuan. Even so, it is still very difficult to get a share, and many investors are queuing up.

The Financing War Among Large Model Companies Is Not Over

Even though the financing amounts and valuations of companies like Kimi have repeatedly hit record highs, these funds may still be insufficient to support the future competition in large models.

As the model capabilities continue to improve, the Token call volume is also soaring. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the average daily Token call volume in China exceeded 140 trillion in March this year, a more than thousand - fold increase in just two years.

Behind the explosive growth of Token call volume, the pressure on computing power costs has also increased sharply. In March this year, the three major cloud service providers in China, Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Baidu Smart Cloud, successively raised their prices within a week. The price of some models in Tencent Cloud's Hunyuan series increased by more than 460% at most.

Since the beginning of the year, many large model companies have successively raised their API call prices. The input price (cache miss) of Kimi's newly released K2.6 model for every million Tokens is $0.95, an increase of about 58% compared to $0.60 for K2.5; the output price is $4, an increase of about 33% compared to $3 for K2.5.

After Zhipu released GLM - 5.1 in April this year, the input price (cache miss) for every million Tokens increased by another 10%. Zhipu's CEO, Zhang Peng, said in the first - quarter earnings report this year that the API call pricing of Zhipu increased by 83% in the first quarter, but even so, the market demand still exceeded supply.

The capital expenditures of several major Internet giants have all increased significantly. Previously, media reports said that ByteDance is expected to have a capital expenditure of about 160 billion yuan this year, about half of which will be used for AI chip procurement. At the beginning of last year, Alibaba announced that it would invest more than 380 billion yuan in cloud and AI hardware infrastructure in the next three years, with the total investment exceeding the sum of the past ten years. But just a few months later, Alibaba claimed that it would continue to increase its investment on this basis.

Not to mention the more massive computing power infrastructure construction plans of overseas companies such as OpenAI, Meta, and Google. According to the recent court testimony of Greg Brockman, co - founder and president of OpenAI, OpenAI's computing power expenditure will reach $50 billion this year, and it plans to cumulatively invest $600 billion in computing power by 2030. Meta has previously significantly raised its capital expenditure forecast for this year, with the annual capital expenditure reaching a maximum of $145 billion, a record high.

Startups feel the pressure of computing power more acutely. According to the financial report data previously released by Zhipu, more than 70% of the company's R & D expenditure is used for computing power services. As the revenues of large model companies continue to grow, the computing power costs are also soaring.

The talent war in the large model market is also becoming increasingly fierce. In the past year, the researchers at DeepSeek have become the targets of poaching by major Internet giants, and the team members have been constantly leaving. Previously, late - breaking news reported that ByteDance recruited Guo Daya, a former DeepSeek researcher, with an annual salary of nearly 100 million yuan to lead the Agent team of ByteDance's Seed.

DeepSeek, which has always refused external financing in the past, now has to try to raise more funds externally. After the news of DeepSeek's financing spread, the company's valuation has been continuously increasing, and the latest valuation may have reached $45 - 50 billion.

Even though Yang Zhilin, the founder of Kimi, has always publicly stated that the company is not in a hurry to go public, the rumors about Kimi's listing in the market seem to never stop. In March, Bloomberg reported that Kimi is considering an IPO in Hong Kong and has had preliminary contacts with China International Capital Corporation and Goldman Sachs regarding the listing plan. Jieyue Xingchen, which was reported to have started Pre - IPO financing in early February this year, is also rumored to plan to list in Hong Kong this year.

Zhipu, which has successfully listed in Hong Kong, is also advancing its A - share listing plan. According to the previous information on the official website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Zhipu plans to apply for listing on the STAR Market, and the IPO tutoring institutions are Guotai Haitong Securities and China International Capital Corporation.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Shangshan", author: Shangshan Team, published by 36Kr with authorization.