Kimi is on fire, with the valuation of Moonlight's Dark Side soaring to 18 billion USD, quadrupling in less than 3 months!

The AI startup Moonside is conducting a new round of financing with a valuation of approximately $18 billion, aiming to raise up to $1 billion, with its valuation quadrupling in less than three months. On Saturday, according to Hard AI, Moonside has begun discussions for its latest round of financing, reaching a valuation of $18 billion. Earlier this year, the company completed over $700 million in financing, with a valuation of $10 billion at that time; in a $500 million financing round at the end of last year, its valuation was only $4.3 billion. Kimi Claw has seen explosive growth; according to Hard AI, since its launch, Kimi's revenue in the 20 days since the end of January has exceeded the total revenue for the entire year of 2025. Additionally, data from global payment giant Stripe shows that the number of payment orders from Kimi's individual subscription users increased by 8,280% month-on-month in January. Moonside was founded by former Tsinghua University professor Yang Zhilin, who previously participated in AI project development at Meta Platforms Inc. and Google. Founder Yang Zhilin stated in an all-staff letter, "The amount of financing exceeds that of most IPO fundraising and the targeted placements of listed companies, and we believe we can raise a larger amount of funds from the primary market." Three Rounds of Financing Set Records, Valuation Surge is Rare In less than three months, Moonside has completed three rounds of financing, setting a record for the most consecutive financing rounds for domestic large models in recent years, and becoming the domestic "decacorn" company with the fastest valuation to break $10 billion. Previously, existing shareholders of Moonside, Alibaba, Tencent, and 5Y Capital, all increased their investments in the round of financing at a $10 billion valuation. The participants in the latest round are currently unclear. From the valuation trajectory, Moonside has completed a leap from $4.3 billion to $18 billion in just a few months. Kimi Claw Ignites Growth, Subscription Data Shines Kimi Claw has experienced explosive growth since its launch, with Moonside being one of the first companies to commercialize the trend driven by the open-source intelligent agent OpenClaw, launching Kimi Claw powered by the latest Kimi K2.5 model. Data from global payment giant Stripe shows that the number of payment orders from Kimi's individual subscription users increased by 8,280% month-on-month in January, and rose another 123.8% in February, ranking among the top ten on Stripe's global list. Moonside currently offers tiered subscription services to individual users while providing underlying technical capabilities to enterprise clients. The financing enthusiasm for Moonside is a microcosm of the AI investment wave in China. In Hong Kong, competitors Zhiyu and MiniMax Group Inc. have recently seen transaction valuations between $30 billion and $40 billion, with MiniMax briefly surpassing Baidu in market value