China’s New AI Model Limits New Subscriptions
Hong Kong: Kimi K3, the powerful new Chinese AI model that is causing a stir in the US tech industry, suspended new subscriptions a few days after launch due to demand exceeding capacity.
This development highlighted the challenges Chinese AI models face in serving a growing user base at home and abroad at a time when the US-China technology race is heating up.
China’s open-source, low-cost advanced AI models, including DeepSeek’s latest V4, are rapidly gaining traction globally. In early 2025, DeepSeek shook up world markets and helped establish China as a serious rival to the United States, where China’s leading AI models are largely open source, meaning made available for people to study and develop.
“Kimi K3 received a lot more love than we expected,” Beijing-based Moonshot AI wrote in an X post late Sunday. “Over the last 48 hours, demand has approached the limits of our current capacity.”
Moonshot said it is prioritizing existing subscribers and will temporarily pause new ones. “We are adding capacity as quickly as we can and will reopen new subscription points in batches,” he added. The AI startup also posted a similar message on Chinese social media.
The public launch of K3 late last week, which aims to challenge more advanced AI models from Anthropic, OpenAI and others, shook up its US rivals. It is considered the world’s largest open-source AI model, with 2.8 trillion parameters that measure the capabilities of an AI model.
“New model releases often trigger huge interest, which can strain existing computing infrastructure,” said Lian Jye Su, principal analyst at technology research and advisory group Omdia. “This suggests that Moonshot AI does not have enough computing chips to meet the current surge in demand.”
Su said the main reason was mostly due to Moonshot’s failure to fully anticipate the rise in K3’s popularity. He said K3 is “very demanding” in terms of computing requirements, making computing allocation challenging and expensive.
By front-end coding ability, a measure of the performance of AI models, Kimi K3 topped the chart of major advanced AI models in the rankings on Arena, an AI model evaluation platform, after its public release.
The launch of K3 also put pressure on shares of American tech giants due to concerns that more affordable Chinese AI models could reduce the pricing power and demand of US AI companies; Even as US-led restrictions have already blocked China’s access to some of the world’s advanced technologies, including the latest chips.
K3 is one of China’s latest new artificial intelligence models that has caused strong reactions globally.
Over the weekend, China’s Alibaba also previewed its latest Qwen3.8 Max AI model, which the tech giant said is one of the world’s most powerful models with 2.4 trillion parameters, second only to Anthropic’s Fable 5. Last month, Chinese startup Zhipu or Z.ai also launched the GLM-5.2 model, which has been rapidly adopted worldwide.
