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Thu, 23 Jul 2026

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 China's Moonshot AI stole from Anthropic, Trump tech adviser says

The allegations come as Chinese AI companies are facing increased US government scrutiny.

* US President Donald Trump's Science and Technology adviser Michael Kratsios accused China's Moonshot AI of stealing capabilities from top US artificial intelligence (AI) models.
* Moonshot AI used a technique called distillation, where a weaker AI model extracts answers from a stronger one, to develop its K3 model, known as Kimi K3.
* The K3 model gained attention globally for being able to rival top US technology and was unveiled last week.
* Kratsios said that Moonshot AI also gained access to restricted cutting-edge Nvidia servers to train its models, despite Washington restricting the export of Nvidia's most advanced chips in 2022 over concerns they could be used by the Chinese military.
* The White House adviser alleged that Moonshot AI "distilled" capabilities from Anthropic's Fable AI for the development of its K3 model and may have also used servers powered by Nvidia's GB300 Grace Blackwell computing platform.
* US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Tuesday that the US would examine whether Chinese AI models have stolen the capabilities from American rivals, and "sanctions will be on the table" if they do.
* Moonshot AI is set to release Kimi K3 as an open-source model on July 27.