The second most-used large language model on the planet was built by a three-year-old Beijing company most US angels have never heard of.

Moonshot AI raised $2 billion this week at a $20 billion valuation. Six months ago it was worth $4.3 billion. Annual recurring revenue hit $100 million in March and $200 million in April. The lead investor in the latest round is Meituan, China's largest food delivery company.

DeepSeek, which still has never taken outside investment, is reportedly in talks to raise at $45 billion.

The US semiconductor export control strategy assumed that restricting chip access would constrain Chinese AI development. Moonshot's Kimi K2.6 model runs on a trillion parameters and costs 88% less per API call than its Western equivalents.

The export controls may have changed the inputs.

They did not change the output.