French Investors Back Moonshot AI at $30B Pre-Money Valuation Ahead of IPO
Moonshot AI, the company behind the Kimi model family, has received about €10 million in a pre-IPO round from a group of investors dominated by French backers, at a pre-money valuation of $30 billion.
The investment was pooled through Techmind Moonshot AI, a special purpose vehicle set up by French investment intermediary Techmind. One participant, Pyratz Corp., a Paris-listed investment company, contributed roughly €100,000, according to CEO Bilal El Alamy. Shares were bought via Cathay Capital, a France-China investment firm.
The financing was completed in summer 2026. Moonshot AI plans to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in the first half of 2027, having reportedly filed confidentially. The company is also said to be weighing a dual listing on Shanghai's STAR Market. Founded in 2023, Moonshot AI has raised about $5 billion in total and employs around 300 people. Its flagship Kimi K3 model has 2.8 trillion parameters and a 1 million-token context window.
El Alamy cited the progress of open-weight models and Kimi K3's competitive positioning as reasons for the bet. Pyratz also plans to combine Moonshot AI's open-weight models with homomorphic encryption technology from portfolio company Zama, aiming at sovereign AI infrastructure.
