Alibaba, Huawei back China’s largest open AI model

Alibaba Group ↗ 0.68% and Huawei announced on July 27 that their AI server platforms now support Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, the world's largest open-weight AI model, just hours after the Beijing-based startup released the full model weights to the public. The announcements underscore a rapid mobilization by China's tech giants to build domestic computing infrastructure capable of running frontier-scale AI without reliance on U.S. chips.

Domestic Chip Ecosystem Rallies Around K3

Alibaba Cloud confirmed that its Zhenwu M890 supernode instance achieved "Day-0 compatibility" with Kimi K3, meaning the chip was ready to run the model on the same day its weights became available. The two companies said they would deepen collaboration on domestic computing power, with both Alibaba's Qwen AI platform and its Bailian model service providing Kimi K3 via API.kucoin+1

Huawei's Ascend division announced that its full Ascend 950 series and Atlas A3 products support Kimi K3 deployment, noting that the model's 896-expert architecture "fully leverages the advantages of Ascend's ultra-node architecture". Separately, Qujing Tech completed inference adaptation of Kimi K3 on the Ascend Atlas A3 using the open-source SGLang engine.news.futunn

A Model That Shook Silicon Valley

Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model released on July 16, ranks third on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index behind Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol, and first in frontend code generation benchmarks. After Moonshot open-sourced the weights on July 27, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue said K3 topped the platform's trending chart within 30 minutes — "the fastest launch growth rate ever".tomshardware+2

The model's arrival, paired with Alibaba's preview of its own 2.4-trillion-parameter Qwen3.8-Max at the World AI Conference in Shanghai on July 19, has renewed pressure on Washington. Axios reported that the Trump administration was considering banning Chinese open-weight models, prompting what TechCrunch called a broader "panic in Silicon Valley". The Hill reported that K3 is "forcing Washington and Silicon Valley to reckon with another sign of intense competition with Beijing".yottalabs+3

Open-Source Arms Race Intensifies

Demand for K3 has already strained Moonshot's own capacity. The company paused new subscriptions days after launch, writing on X that "demand has pushed close to the limits of our current capacity". The open-weight release shifts the burden to cloud providers, and international platforms including Nebius, Baseten, and Fireworks also announced same-day support. The coding tool Cursor and Cognition's Devin agent have integrated the model as well.broadbandbreakfast+1

Guojin Securities noted that 3-trillion-class models are driving deployment architectures toward ultra-node clusters, creating fresh opportunities for domestic chipmakers whose offerings span chips, high-speed interconnects, and inference software stacks.news.futunn