Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI has announced the launch of its new open-source model Kimi K2, which the company claims outperforms other well-known models.
Advantages of Kimi K2
Moonshot AI claims Kimi K2 outperforms Claude Opus 4 on two benchmarks and shows better results than OpenAI's GPT-4.1 on several metrics. Additionally, the model offers lower token processing costs:
* $0.15 per 1 million input tokens * $2.50 per 1 million output tokens
In comparison, Claude Opus 4 charges $15 for 1 million input tokens and $75 for 1 million output tokens. OpenAI's GPT-4.1 has rates of $2 for 1 million input tokens and $8 for 1 million output tokens.
Available Versions of Kimi K2
Kimi K2 is based on the Mixture-of-Experts architecture and contains 1 trillion parameters, with 32 billion active at any given time. These active parameters are specialized compute blocks assigned to specific tasks. Kimi K2 is available for free through the Kimi app and web interface. The company has released two open-source versions:
* **Kimi-K2-Base** — a base model designed for researchers and developers who need full customization control. * **Kimi-K2-Instruct** — an instruction-tuned version optimized for universal applications, including chatbots and agent-based AI scripting.
Trend Towards Open Source
The new model reflects a broader industry trend: the move towards open source, which allows both startups and large tech companies to improve efficiency and accelerate the adoption of AI products. This approach involves providing public access to a program's source code, enabling third-party developers to:
* Modify and refine the model architecture * Fix bugs * Scale functionality * Implement their own improvements and customizations for specific tasks. Prominent Chinese startups such as DeepSeek and Tencent also offer open-source models. Among American competitors, Meta and, to some extent, Google have adopted this approach.
The launch of Kimi K2 highlights the growing significance of open AI models and their impact on the technology market. However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has announced that the launch of the company's own open-source AI model has been postponed indefinitely due to the need for additional security testing.
