Moonshot AI releases Kimi K3
Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 on July 16, 2026, as a 2.8-trillion-parameter multimodal model with a one-million-token context window. Its products and API launched that day; the full weights followed in a separate open-source event on July 27.
What happened
Event details
Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 on July 16, 2026, as a flagship multimodal model for software engineering, knowledge work, and deep reasoning. Its architecture uses Kimi Delta Attention, Attention Residuals, and Stable LatentMoE, supports native visual understanding, and provides up to a one-million-token context window. Moonshot AI documents 2.8 trillion total parameters. Arena.ai reported that Kimi K3 ranked first in Frontend Code Arena at 1679 points, a 17-place improvement over Kimi K2.6 and ahead of Claude Fable 5. K3 launched across Kimi web and mobile products, Kimi Work, Kimi Code, and the Kimi API under model ID kimi-k3. The full model weights were not public on launch day. Moonshot AI released the official repository and full weights separately on July 27, 2026; see the related open-source event on this page.
Assessment
Why it matters
K3 combines a 2.8-trillion-parameter architecture, native multimodality, and a one-million-token context window with a first-place Frontend Code Arena result of 1679, strengthening Moonshot AI's position in coding, knowledge work, and long-context reasoning.
Availability
Access notes
Kimi K3 launched on Kimi.com, the Kimi mobile app, Kimi Work, Kimi Code, and the Kimi API under model ID kimi-k3. Its full weights were released later in the related July 27 open-source event.