Beijing-based Moonshot AI paused new subscriptions to its Kimi K3 model on July 20, just days after launch, after a 48-hour demand surge pushed its computing capacity to the limit. Existing subscribers keep full access; new signups stay frozen until the company adds GPU capacity in batches.
Kimi K3 is a 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight model — the largest released to date — and has topped several coding and reasoning benchmarks, outperforming rivals including GPT-5.6 Sol and Claude Fable 5 on select tests. Analysts say the model's unusual computational demands make capacity planning "both difficult and costly," a strain also felt by rivals DeepSeek, Alibaba and Zhipu/Z.ai as Chinese AI labs race for global market share.
Moonshot says it will introduce two focused membership tiers to better allocate scarce compute and plans to release Kimi K3's full model weights by July 27, alongside a push toward an IPO. The episode underscores how quickly demand for frontier open models can outstrip even well-funded infrastructure.