The launch comes amid a period of increased tensions between the US and China regarding control of the global AI and chip sectors.
Moonshot AI, an Alibaba-backed Chinese start-up founded in 2023, has issued an update to its open-source large language model Kimi 2, with the release of the Kimi K2 Thinking.
Moonshot AI’s claims its new model is a “thinking agent” capable of reasoning “step by step” while executing 200-300 sequential tool calls, without the need for human interference, with the purpose of solving a range of complex problems.
According to Beijing-based Moonshot AI, it is a signifier of their efforts “in test-time scaling, by scaling both thinking tokens and tool calling steps” and there have been significant improvements in “reasoning, agentic search, coding, writing and general capabilities”.
In a test of its capabilities, Moonshot AI said that the model was able to solve a PhD-level maths problem through 23 interleaved reasoning and tool calls, testing and re-evaluating until it had a sufficient answer.
Improvements upon its agentic search and browser capabilities was also noted by Moonshot AI. Using BrowseComp, a benchmark designed to evaluate AI models’ ability to continuously browse, search and reason over hard-to-find real-world web information, Kimi K2 Thinking reportedly achieved a score of 60.2pc. For reference, the human baseline score for BrowseComp is 29.2pc.
The model was also found to be capable of utilising its 200-300 sequential tool call capability to perform “dynamic cycles of think, search, browser use, think, code”.
Moonshot AI said: “This interleaved reasoning allows it to decompose ambiguous, open-ended problems into clear, actionable subtasks.”
The company also claimed that the update included general improvements to the AI agent’s creative writing, with a stronger sense of emotion, style, imagination and natural fluency, as well as changes in its practical writing abilities, allowing it to produce more precise content and long-form content suitable for research, academic and analytical writing.
Moonshot’s AI model comes amid a period of significant tension between the US and China, as both countries aim to pull away in the AI race. In late October, US tech giant Nvidia made history as the first company to reach a market value of $5trn. Earlier this week, its CEO Jensen Huang told attendees at the Financial Times’ Future of AI Summit that China was beating the US due to factors such as lower energy costs and looser regulations.
However, he later softened his stance in a post on X, where he said: “As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI. It’s vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide.”
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