Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 on July 16, and it is the largest open-weight model anyone has shipped, at 2.8 trillion total parameters. The benchmarks are real, the weights are coming on July 27, and I think there are two things being conflated in the coverage that are worth separating out. First: this is a genuine frontier model, not a "strong for an open model" disclaimer. Second: "open weight at 2.8T" is a different category than the open-weight models most teams are used to self-hosting. The Benchmark Numbers Are Not Hype Let me be specific. On Artificial Analysis's Intelligence Index , K3 scores 57, matching Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5. That is a model with open weights landing in the same tier as Anthropic's second-best. On GDPval-AA v2, which evaluates across 44 real job categories and 9 industries, K3 scores 1,687. Third place globally , behind Claude Fable 5 Max (1,815) and GPT-5.6 Sol Max (1,747). It beats Opus 4.8. The result that got the most atten...