White House says Moonshot AI stole US tech for K3

A senior White House official has accused Chinese artificial intelligence company Moonshot AI of covertly using proprietary U.S. technology to develop its latest model, escalating tensions over intellectual property and technological competition. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, stated on July 22 that Moonshot "distilled Anthropic's Fable for the development of its K3 model."

Kratsios alleged the Beijing-based startup developed a sophisticated internal platform to conduct large-scale distillation against U.S. models, repeatedly switching access methods to avoid detection. He distinguished between legitimate, open distillation practices and what he termed covert industrial-scale operations aimed at stealing proprietary technology and undermining American research.

The accusations follow the high-profile launch of Moonshot's Kimi K3 model, a 2.8 trillion-parameter system released as an open-weight model between July 16 and July 18. The model's advanced capabilities, particularly in coding tasks, generated such intense demand that the company temporarily suspended new paid subscriptions due to overwhelming strain on its...