HONG KONG — Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based startup behind the Kimi chatbot, is preparing a Hong Kong stock market debut that could value it at up to $50 billion, a record for a homegrown Chinese AI company.

But before it rings the opening bell, Moonshot must deal with a fight from its own past. The company's top executives are in talks to settle a long-running dispute with former shareholders, who are seeking compensation that could run to hundreds of millions of dollars.

A meteoric rise

Moonshot has quietly filed a confidential application to list in Hong Kong, according to Reuters, which first reported the filing in September. The company is targeting a debut in early 2027, with early investor meetings reportedly set to begin as soon as this month.

The $50 billion figure follows a final private funding round reported by Bloomberg on October 6. It caps a remarkable climb. Moonshot was valued at about $4.3 billion at the end of 2025 and $30 billion after a funding round in June 2026.

Founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a former Tsinghua University professor and Google researcher, the Alibaba-backed company is one of a group of Chinese AI developers, alongside DeepSeek, challenging the dominance of American firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

The dispute that won't go away

The trouble dates back to Moonshot's birth. Yang Zhilin and Chief Technology Officer Zhang Yutao co-founded another AI company, Recurrent.ai, in 2016, before launching Moonshot in 2023. Both remain directors of Recurrent's holding company.

Recurrent alleges the pair set up Moonshot without approval from Recurrent's board. The case has been in arbitration in Hong Kong since 2024.

When Moonshot was founded, Recurrent received 9.5% of its original shares. Recurrent and its investors now want compensation equal to a further 10.5% of those original shares. Based on Moonshot's $30 billion valuation in June, that claim could be worth more than $700 million, and considerably more at today's $50 billion price tag. Recurrent and its investors are also weighing a separate legal action in the Cayman Islands against Moonshot President Zhang Yutong.

According to people familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters, Moonshot's executives are now negotiating a settlement, though it is unclear whether a deal is close. The dispute is not expected to derail the IPO. But if it drags on, it could raise awkward questions about governance, ownership and disclosure for would-be investors.

Hong Kong's stock exchange and its Securities and Futures Commission declined to comment.

China's AI listing race

Moonshot's IPO plan comes as investor appetite for Chinese AI soars. Rivals DeepSeek and Z.AI are reportedly valued even higher, at around $74 billion and $66 billion respectively. A successful Moonshot listing would make it one of the first of China's new generation of AI model makers to test public markets on this scale.

What to watch

Three questions will shape Moonshot's path to market: whether a settlement with Recurrent is reached, how the ownership claims are disclosed to investors, and whether the dispute affects the timing or price of the listing. Reports on the size of the share sale vary, with figures ranging from about $3 billion to $5 billion.

If Moonshot clears these hurdles, its debut could become one of the defining tech listings of 2027.

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