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Kimi AI launches free, unlimited model Kimi 1.5 to rival GPT 4o and Claude 3.5. Make no mistake: the AI arms race is officially underway, and China is rapidly becoming a formidable player in developing some of the most advanced models we have seen yet.
Just days after DeepSeek R1 made headlines, Moonshot AI introduced Kimi AI 1.5, a model already touted superior to OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet. This latest entrant shows advancements in multimodal reasoning, long-context understanding, and real-time data processing, raising questions about the future of AI dominance.
There is an old cliche that the US innovates, China replicates, and Europe regulates. We look beyond the stereotypes to determine where this free real-time search, file analysis, and research tool fits in the competitive AI market.
Key Takeaways
- Moonshot’s Kimi AI 1.5 free model challenges paid AI tools from OpenAI and Google.
- Its multimodal capabilities allow seamless integration of text, images, and code.
- Kimi AI outperforms DeepSeek in reasoning, but DeepSeek excels in math and logic.
- Accessible via web and mobile, Kimi AI requires no login for immediate use.
- Kimi AI highlights China’s growing AI influence.
What Is Kimi AI?
Moonshot AI, a Beijing-based startup, develops the Kimi AI chatbot. It is a large language model (LLM) designed to understand and generate human-like text responses, particularly in Chinese.
This latest AI tool can handle up to 2 million Chinese characters in a single prompt, making it highly effective for analyzing lengthy documents and handling complex tasks.
Moonshot AI is positioning Kimi as a cost-effective yet powerful alternative to the frontier models coming out of the United States, building it at a fraction of their cost.
🚀 Introducing Kimi k1.5 – Now on Web https://t.co/7YeIld97BT!
We’re excited to announce the launch of Kimi 1.5 on the web! We've also rolled out English support (still fine-tuning). Check out the easy model-switching in the image below.
🔧 Key Features:
🔹 Completely FREE… pic.twitter.com/CrdCxsoXzz
— Kimi.ai (@Kimi_Moonshot) January 25, 2025
What Makes Kimi Special?
The Kimi AI model stands out due to several unique features. Its multimodal capabilities allow it to process and reason across text, images, and code. This gives it an edge in tasks requiring multiple formats. Its extended context processing enables it to handle up to 128,000 tokens in a single prompt, maintaining context over long conversations.
Kimi k1.5: The Multimodal Reasoning Model
– Available now on https://t.co/7YeIld97BT 🦄💡 What can Kimi k1.5 do?
🔹 Image to Code: Convert images into structured code and insights
🔹 GeoGuessr: Identify and pinpoint locations in geography games like a pro 🌍
🔹 Visual… pic.twitter.com/LEnTC4zZRL— Kimi.ai (@Kimi_Moonshot) January 26, 2025
Performance benchmarks place Kimi ahead of many established models. On the MATH 500 benchmark, it scored 96.2%, surpassing GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet in mathematical problem-solving.
It also ranked in the 94th percentile on Codeforces, a competitive coding platform, and demonstrated superior performance in the MathVista benchmark, particularly excelling in vision-language tasks.
Overall, Kimi 1.5 AI has surpassed GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 by up to 550% in some benchmarks around reasoning and problem-solving.
One of the problems with benchmark tests is that making comparisons can be notoriously tricky and misleading. But, Kimi’s reported numbers suggest a significant leap in AI capabilities.
How to Use Kimi AI
Users can access Kimi AI through a web interface or the Kimi app. The AI can be used in multiple ways, including uploading files such as PDFs and Word documents for analysis, engaging in real-time web searches across over 100 websites, and utilizing its advanced reasoning and multimodal capabilities to solve complex problems.
Best of all, users can directly access it through YesChat.ai without requiring a login or handing over any personal data.
Price
Kimi AI 1.5 is completely free, unlike many leading AI models that operate on a subscription basis.
This democratizes access to advanced AI and challenges the traditional monetization strategies of OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
This strategy pressures established AI companies that rely on paid models, forcing them to rethink their approach to accessibility and pricing in an increasingly competitive market.
While OpenAI and Anthropic continue monetizing their AI offerings and offering expensive features, Moonshot AI’s free access model changes how AI can be used at scale without cost barriers.
Team Behind Kimi AI
The team behind Kimi AI includes some of China’s brightest AI researchers. Zhilin Yang, a Carnegie Mellon University PhD with deep expertise in machine learning, founded Moonshot AI.
The company has quickly become one of China’s “AI Tigers,” receiving substantial funding from Chinese tech giants like Alibaba Group Holding and venture capital firm HongShan, not to mention a respectable $3 billion valuation.
Congratulations to my former CMU PhD student Zhilin Yang on his new LLM startup Moonshot AI, raising over $1B in VC funding.
Zhilin has done some fundamental work in NLP and large language models during his time at CMU including TransformerXL and XLNet. https://t.co/IOSy9PE6tF
— Russ Salakhutdinov (@rsalakhu) February 23, 2024
Market Reaction
Many have also praised the AI tool’s ability to handle extensive text processing and real-time data retrieval, hailing it as a serious competitor to OpenAI.
Goodbye DeepSeek
China just dropped another AI model – Kimi AI and it's INSANE
13 Wild Examples so far (Don't miss the 5th one) pic.twitter.com/LfrgBP3uLy
— Poonam Soni (@CodeByPoonam) February 12, 2025
Jun Xia, Portfolio Manager, CFA, at DPS, said in a LinkedIn post:
“DeepSeek might be just the beginning of disruption. Kimi k1’5 (just released by Moonshot AI) and Doubao Pro 1,5 (just released by ByteDance) have comparable capabilities at also very lean costs, which are just a fraction of huge Capex by the big Tech (US exceptionalism). Good news for the user of AI!”
However, skeptics remain cautious about AI benchmark results, as self-reported metrics often lack independent verification.
Xia also expressed concerns, saying that “sooner or later, all those free AI tools could be banned by the US for reasons such as ‘data protection’ and ‘national security,’ etc.”
Predictably, geopolitical considerations continue to shape discussions around AI development, particularly with Chinese companies gaining momentum against their Western counterparts.
But Kimi AI is just one of many new solutions disrupting the search and research space.
Mel Morris, the English entrepreneur best known for his early backing of Candy Crush, recently told us that his approach to an AI research engine delivers a more comprehensive understanding of complex topics.
Speaking on Tech Talks Daily podcast, Morris shared insights into how Corpora.AI is also moving beyond surface-level results and provides users with extensive, well-sourced information.
“Our system can ingest two million documents per second. We’ve processed over 100 petabytes of open-source intelligence – web pages, articles, reports – and used that to create a language graph. It’s a completely new way to extract depth from unstructured data.”
Morris also believes that AI research should become more transparent. “If an AI tool doesn’t show you its sources, you have no idea where the information came from,” he said.
There is no denying that competition is much better for users than having a few key players dominating the world of AI.
The Bottom Line
The growing presence of Chinese AI models suggests a future where innovation is no longer confined to Silicon Valley but is increasingly driven by a global contest for AI supremacy.
As AI development continues to accelerate, the introduction of powerful contenders from Corpora.AI to Kimi AI 1.5 marks a massive shift in how AI technology is built, distributed, and accessed worldwide. For users, it is already transforming real-time search and file analysis. What does this mean for Google? That’s a story for another day.
FAQ
Who is the CEO of Moonshot AI?
What makes Kimi AI innovative or unique?
Is Kimi AI better than Deepseek?
What are the top use cases for Kimi AI?
References
- KIMI K1.5: SCALING REINFORCEMENT LEARNING WITH LLMS (Arxiv)
- YesChat.ai: Cutting-Edge AI Models for Chat, Music, and Video (YesChat)
- Chinese start-up Moonshot AI raises US$1 billion in funding round led by Alibaba and VC HongShan amid strong interest for OpenAI-type firms | South China Morning Post (SCMP)
- Jun Xia on LinkedIn: DeepSeek might be just the beginning of disruption (LinkedIn)
- From Candy Crush to AI Research: Mel Morris on His Latest Innovation (Apple Podcasts)
- corpora.ai (Corpora.ai)
