Moonshot AI suspended new consumer subscriptions for its Kimi K3 model on July 19 due to overwhelming user demand that strained its GPU computing capacity. “To protect the experience of existing subscribers, we’re temporarily pausing new subscriptions and prioritizing compute for current members,” the company stated on X. Existing subscribers will not be impacted by this pause, and Moonshot AI is working to increase capacity to reopen new subscription spots in batches.
Kimi K3, launched on July 16, features a 2.8 trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model with a one-million-token context window and native vision capabilities. It is noted as the largest open-weight AI model available, surpassing DeepSeek V4’s 1.6 trillion parameters. Initial user request volume after the launch exceeded expectations, prompting the suspension of new subscriptions.
In addition to halting new signups, Moonshot AI announced a restructuring of its membership system. It will introduce “Kimi Membership” for general use and “Kimi Code Membership” targeting programming workflows to optimize resource allocation.
Kimi K3 has garnered attention for its competitive performance against major U.S. models. Evaluations rank K3 closely behind Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol in overall performance benchmarks, while K3 outperformed these models in specific tasks such as front-end coding and long-context work. It received a score of 57 on Artificial Analysis’s Intelligence Index, placing it behind Fable at 60 and Sol at 59.
The API pricing for Kimi K3 is set at $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, aligning with Anthropic’s pricing, but significantly higher than other Chinese AI services. The full model weights are scheduled for open-source release by July 27, which may reduce demand pressures on Moonshot AI’s infrastructure.
