Moonshot pauses Kimi K3 sign-ups after demand strains GPU capacity

Moonshot has suspended new subscriptions to Kimi K3 after demand for the Chinese artificial intelligence startup’s new model pushed its computing resources close to capacity within 48 hours, the company said on X on Sunday. The pause follows the release of a 2.8tn-parameter open-weight model that Moonshot says has a 1mn-token context window and native vision capabilities, adding pressure to a global AI market already watching lower-cost Chinese systems.

The company said existing subscribers would not be affected by the temporary halt. Moonshot said it was adding capacity and would reopen subscription slots in batches rather than restore access to all new users at once.

GPU availability has become a binding constraint for AI services because each user request requires compute to run inference, particularly for large models and long-context tasks. By limiting new subscriptions, Moonshot said it aims to preserve service quality for customers already paying for access while it expands available resources.

Moonshot also said it would separate its paid plans into two categories: Kimi Membership for Kimi Web, App and Work, and Kimi Code Membership for coding workflows. The company said the change would help it allocate compute more precisely and keep performance stable.

Kimi K3 was introduced on Thursday in a company blog post. Moonshot described the system as an open 3tn-class model intended for long-horizon coding, knowledge work and reasoning. The company said Kimi K3 still lagged the strongest proprietary systems, including Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol, but said it performed at frontier level in its own evaluations and outperformed other tested models.

Open-weight models publish model weights for outside use, making them more accessible to developers and companies than fully closed systems, although access terms can vary by provider. Such releases can affect pricing and competitive dynamics because users may be able to run or adapt the model outside a single vendor’s hosted service.

The Associated Press reported Monday that Kimi K3’s 2.8tn parameters make it the world’s largest open-source AI model. AP also reported that the release affected shares of large US technology companies, as investors assessed whether lower-cost Chinese models could challenge demand and pricing power in the sector.

Reuters reported Monday that Kimi K3 and other increasingly capable lower-cost models from China are testing assumptions that Chinese developers remain months behind leading US AI companies. The report placed Moonshot’s capacity pause in the context of strong demand for the model and the broader race to commercialise advanced AI systems.

Moonshot did not give a specific date for reopening subscriptions. The company said additional spots would become available in batches as capacity is added.

This story draws on original reporting from PYMNTS.