Moonshot AI seeks 30% revenue share in US cloud talks

Moonshot AI is negotiating with U.S. cloud giants for up to a 30% revenue share from its Kimi K3 model, facing regulatory and data governance hurdles.

Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI is in early negotiations with major U.S. cloud providers—Microsoft, Amazon, and Google—over revenue-sharing agreements to host its Kimi K3 model. The company seeks up to a 30% share of revenue from K3-related services, targeting firms earning over $20 million annually from reselling the model. DigitalOcean has already signed a similar deal, and Alibaba is preparing a comparable strategy for its own AI model. Key discussion points include profit distribution, data governance, and token usage auditing. If successful, these talks would mark the first major revenue-sharing pact between a Chinese AI company and leading U.S. cloud giants. Moonshot AI faces scrutiny from U.S. authorities over alleged use of Anthropic’s Fable technology in Kimi K3, which the company denies. Regulatory and political risks, such as export restrictions or blacklisting, could impact the outcome and broader adoption of Chinese AI models internationally.