---
title: "Moonshot AI Releases 2.8 Trillion Parameter Kimi K3 Weights with Stricter License Terms"
source: "Simon Willison 博客（Atom）"
source_tier: "t2"
url: "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/27/kimi-k3/#atom-everything"
permalink: "https://feed.astralor.com/items/itm_d38c097729e6af9e40e08019"
published: "2026-07-27T23:39:04.000Z"
score: 77
channel: "ai"
tags: ["AI license","Kimi-K3","Large Language Models","Open-weight","Moonshot AI"]
---

# Moonshot AI Releases 2.8 Trillion Parameter Kimi K3 Weights with Stricter License Terms

## AI commentary

> This blog post pinpoints a key shift in the open-source AI movement: K3 shows that large models can have public weights without relinquishing commercial control. For AI startups and big cloud providers, understanding this 'layered openness' is more important than parameter counts.

## At a glance

Moonshot AI has fulfilled its promise by releasing the 2.8 trillion parameter Kimi K3 model weights on Hugging Face, totaling 1.56TB. Unlike K2's modified MIT license, K3's license drops the open-source label and requires MaaS businesses with over 100 million MAU or $20 million monthly revenue to sign a separate agreement. OpenRouter already offers K3 from 7 providers at the same price as the official API.

## Key points

- Kimi K3 has 2.8 trillion parameters with 1.56TB weights, now publicly available
- The new license no longer calls itself modified MIT, requiring large MaaS companies to sign a separate agreement
- Moonshot AI consistently uses 'open weight' instead of 'open source'
- OpenRouter aggregates 7 providers offering K3 inference at official pricing

## Full text

moonshotai/Kimi-K3 As promised a few weeks ago, Moonshot have released the weights for their excellent 2.8 trillion parameter Kimi K3. They're a hefty 1.56TB on Hugging Face. Kimi introduced their own janky modified version of the MIT license with K2 back in July 2025. That license just added this paragraph requiring attribution beyond a certain size of commercial entity: Our only modification part is that, if the Software (or any derivative works thereof) is used for any of your commercial products or services that have more than 100 million monthly active users, or more than 20 million US dollars (or equivalent in other currencies) in monthly revenue, you shall prominently display "Kimi K2" on the user interface of such product or service. The K3 license no longer calls itself "modified MIT" and goes further, requiring a separate agreement with Moonshot for those larger companies: If the Licensee or any of its affiliates operates a Model as a Service business, and the aggregate revenue of the Licensee and its affiliates exceeds 20 million US dollars (or the equivalent in other currencies) in total over any consecutive 12 months, the Licensee must enter into a separate agreement with Moonshot AI before using the Software or its derivative works for any commercial purpose. To Kimi's credit, they make no attempt to describe this as an "open source" license in their own materials, consistently using the term "open weight" in its place. OpenRouter is already offering K3 from 7 providers, most of which are at the same $3/million input and $15/million output as Moonshot AI themselves. Tags: ai, generative-ai, llms, llm-pricing, llm-release, ai-in-china, moonshot, kimi, janky-licenses

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Verify against the original before citing; curated by Astral Feed: https://feed.astralor.com/items/itm_d38c097729e6af9e40e08019