On September 12, during midday in Hong Kong and Taiwan time, Moonshot AI, an AI company in China, released a statement on their official Weibo account regarding legal matters. The statement addressed rumors circulating online about the company’s founder and employees, stating that the information was entirely fictitious and maliciously fabricated. Moonshot AI emphasized that they had reported the matter to the authorities promptly and would pursue legal action against those responsible.
The reason behind Moonshot AI’s legal statement stemmed from the news on September 11 that the company’s founder, Yang Zhilin, and 16 other senior executives were taken away by the authorities, causing a stir in the investment and AI communities both domestically and internationally.
The situation escalated further as a result of a 150-page threat intelligence report released by the American AI company, Anthropic, on September 10. The report exposed several Chinese AI companies, including Alibaba, Moonshot AI, DeepSeek, Wise Spectrum AI, Xiaomi, SenseTime, and MiniMax, for extensively utilizing Anthropic’s product, Claude, through false accounts, overseas agents, and intermediary platforms.
In a process known within the industry as “distillation,” Moonshot AI’s Kimi alone made 23 million requests to Claude, a product under Anthropic, from May to July. The distillation principle involves using a powerful “teacher model” to generate results for various tasks, then training a smaller “student model” based on the output results. Many Chinese mainland AI companies have adopted this approach to develop their own products.
One of the highlighted cases in the report revealed instances where Chinese AI companies covertly redirected data, leading to the leakage of sensitive military information. Anthropic accused Moonshot AI of misleading users by making them believe they were using the company’s Kimi model when, in reality, the requests were rerouted to the Claude system for processing, with the answers generated by Claude being presented to the users. This covert request redirection resulted in official data from the Chinese Communist Party and Russia unintentionally flowing into the systems of the American company.
The report cited a case where a Chinese military figure used Moonshot AI’s Kimi model to analyze surveillance data. The military figure loaded surveillance data targeting specific individuals from a CCTV video library in Chengdu, including data from military facilities, a subsidiary of China Electronics Technology Group, and surveillance videos from a large state-owned enterprise. Kimi transmitted this confidential data to Anthropic through intermediary networks.
Another case involved a Chinese engineer using Kimi to build an internal system for a large state-owned enterprise. During the usage of Kimi, the user inadvertently disclosed internal codes and real-time credentials of several prominent Chinese companies, including well-known tech firms. This confidential data was also transmitted to Anthropic.
The incident sparked discussions among investors about verifying information and concerns about Moonshot AI’s funding and the potential disruption of their listing process. Currently, Moonshot AI is valued at $50 billion.
According to Bloomberg’s insider sources on September 4, Moonshot AI has confidentially submitted an application for listing and could potentially raise $3 billion to $5 billion, with plans to complete the listing as early as this year. Bank of America is coordinating the listing, with CICC, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs involved.
Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong reported, citing two insiders, that Moonshot AI might consider listing in both Hong Kong and Shanghai to raise more funds and improve market visibility. One insider mentioned that after discussions with investors in July regarding the specific arrangements for an IPO in Hong Kong, Moonshot AI hinted at further intentions to list in mainland China post-Hong Kong listing.
Another insider revealed that Moonshot AI might target Shanghai’s Science and Technology Innovation Board in mainland China, which focuses on technology companies, with related negotiations potentially kicking off soon. The Innovation Board has recently attracted a group of Chinese tech giants such as Longsys Storage and Yushu Technology and is anticipating the inclusion of notable enterprises like DeepSeek and Changjiang Storage.