China’s new AI model halts new subscriptions as demand swamps capacity - AP News

What the report says

The Associated Press reported that Kimi K3, a new Chinese artificial intelligence model from Beijing-based Moonshot AI, has temporarily stopped accepting new subscriptions after demand surged close to the company’s available capacity within days of launch. Moonshot said in posts on X and Chinese social media late Sunday that it would focus on serving current subscribers while adding capacity and reopening subscription slots in batches.

AP said the episode underscores the operational pressures facing Chinese AI developers as they attract users in China and overseas while competing in an intensifying U.S.-China technology race. Kimi K3 has drawn attention because it is an open-source, lower-cost advanced model positioned against systems from companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI. AP reported that the model has 2.8 trillion parameters and is regarded as the largest open-source AI model.

Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia, told AP that major model launches often bring sudden interest that can tax computing infrastructure. He said Moonshot likely did not fully anticipate the level of demand and that K3’s computing needs make capacity allocation difficult and costly.

The rollout comes amid broader global interest in Chinese AI systems, following earlier attention around DeepSeek and newer models from Alibaba and Zhipu, also known as Z.ai. AP noted that strong Chinese releases have raised investor concerns that cheaper models could challenge U.S. companies’ pricing and demand, even as U.S.-led restrictions limit China’s access to some advanced chip technologies.