Connect with us

Published

on

An AI sign at the MWC Shanghai tech show on June 19, 2025.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

BEIJING — The latest Chinese generative artificial intelligence model to take on OpenAI’s ChatGPT is offering coding capabilities — at a lower price.

Alibaba-backed startup Moonshot released on late Friday night its Kimi K2 model: a low-cost, open source large language model — the two factors that underpinned China-based DeepSeek’s industry disruption in January. Open-source technology provides source code access for free, an approach that few U.S. tech giants have taken, other than Meta and Google to some extent.

Coincidentally, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced early Saturday that there would be an indefinite delay of its first open-source model yet again due to safety concerns. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment on Kimi K2.

Rethinking the AI coding payoff

One of Kimi K2’s strengths is in writing computer code for applications, an area in which businesses see potential to reduce or replace staff with generative AI. OpenAI’s U.S. rival Anthropic focused on coding with its Claude Opus 4 model released in late May.

In its release announcement on social media platforms X and GitHub, Moonshot claimed Kimi K2 surpassed Claude Opus 4 on two benchmarks, and had better overall performance than OpenAI’s coding-focused GPT-4.1 model, based on several industry metrics.

“No doubt [Kimi K2 is] a globally competitive model, and it’s open sourced,” Wei Sun, principal analyst in artificial intelligence at Counterpoint, said in an email Monday.

Cheaper option

“On top of that, it has lower token costs, making it attractive for large-scale or budget-sensitive deployments,” she said.

The new K2 model is available via Kimi’s app and browser interface for free unlike ChatGPT or Claude, which charge monthly subscriptions for their latest AI models.

Kimi is also only charging 15 cents for every 1 million input tokens, and $2.50 per 1 million output tokens, according to its website. Tokens are a way of measuring data for AI model processing.

In contrast, Claude Opus 4 charges 100 times more for input — $15 per million tokens — and 30 times more for output — $75 per million tokens. Meanwhile, for every one million tokens, GPT-4.1 charges $2 for input and $8 for output.

Moonshot AI said on GitHub that developers can use K2 however they wish, with the only requirement that they display “Kimi K2” on the user interface if the commercial product or service has more than 100 million monthly active users, or makes the equivalent of $20 million in monthly revenue.

Hot AI market

Initial reviews of K2 on both English and Chinese social media have largely been positive, although there are some reports of hallucinations, a prevalent issue in generative AI, in which the models make up information.

Still, K2 is “the first model I feel comfortable using in production since Claude 3.5 Sonnet,” Pietro Schirano, founder of startup MagicPath that offers AI tools for design, said in a post on X.

Moonshot has open sourced some of its prior AI models. The company’s chatbot surged in popularity early last year as China’s alternative to ChatGPT, which isn’t officially available in the country. But similar chatbots from ByteDance and Tencent have since crowded the market, while tech giant Baidu has revamped its core search engine with AI tools.

Kimi’s latest AI release comes as investors eye Chinese alternatives to U.S. tech in the global AI competition.

Still, despite the excitement about DeepSeek, the privately-held company has yet to announce a major upgrade to its R1 and V3 model. Meanwhile, Manus AI, a Chinese startup that emerged earlier this year as another DeepSeek-type upstart, has relocated its headquarters to Singapore.

Over in the U.S., OpenAI also has yet to reveal GPT-5.

Work on GPT-5 may be taking up engineering resources, preventing OpenAI from progressing on its open-source model, Counterpoint’s Sun said, adding that it’s challenging to release a powerful open-source model without undermining the competitive advantage of a proprietary model.

Grok 4 competitor

Kimi K2 is not the company’s only recent release. Moonshot launched a Kimi research model last month and claimed it matched Google’s Gemini Deep Research ‘s 26.9 score and beat OpenAI’s version on a benchmark called “Humanity’s Last Exam.”

The Kimi research model even got a mention last week during Elon Musk’s xAI release of Grok 4 — which scored 25.4 on its own on the “Humanity’s Last Exam” benchmark, but attained a 44.4 score when allowed to use a variety of AI tools and web search.

“Kimi-Researcher represents a paradigm shift in agentic AI,” said Winston Ma, adjunct professor at NYU School of Law. He was referring to AI’s capability of simultaneously making several decisions on its own to complete a complex task.

“Instead of merely generating fluent responses, it demonstrates autonomous reasoning at an expert level — the kind of complex cognitive work previously missing from LLMs,” Ma said. He is also author of “The Digital War: How China’s Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain and Cyberspace.”

— CNBC’s Victoria Yeo contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Technology

Firefly Aerospace prices shares at $45, above the expected range

Published

on

By

Firefly Aerospace prices shares at , above the expected range

The Blue Ghost Mission Operations Engineer, Jaxon Liebeck, showcases the Blue Ghost moon lander at Firefly Aerospace headquarters on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024 in Cedar Park.

Houston Chronicle/hearst Newspapers | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images

Firefly Aerospace priced shares in its IPO at $45 on Wednesday, above its expected range.

The Texas-based rocket maker will debut on the Nasdaq Thursday under the ticker symbol “FLY.” The offering raised $868 million and values the company at about $6.3 billion.

Firefly filed its initial prospectus in July and upped its IPO range this week to $41 to $43 a share, from an initial range of $35 to $39.

The space technology sector has seen rising investor interest over the last few years as billionaire investors such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos put their money behind SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively.

So far this year, space technology companies Voyager Technology and Karman Holdings have gone public.

The broader IPO landscape has also seen major public debuts this year from Figma, CoreWeave and Circle as the market for public offerings reopens following a prolonged drought.

Read more CNBC tech news

Volunteers experience life on Mars in the Utah desert

Continue Reading

Technology

Trump vows 100% tariff on chips, unless companies are building in the U.S.

Published

on

By

Trump vows 100% tariff on chips, unless companies are building in the U.S.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event with Apple CEO Tim Cook in the Oval Office of the White House on August 6, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Win Mcnamee | Getty Images

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will impose a 100% tariff on imports of semiconductors and chips, but not for companies that are “building in the United States.”

The announcement of new sector-specific tariffs shows Trump ratcheting up his efforts to pressure businesses to manufacture their products in the U.S.

But specifics about the plan, such as how much U.S. manufacturing a company needs to do in order to qualify for the tariff exemption, were not immediately clear.

“We’re going to be putting a very large tariff on chips and semiconductors,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon.

“But the good news for companies like Apple is if you’re building in the United States or have committed to build, without question, committed to build in the United States, there will be no charge,” he said.

“So in other words, we’ll be putting a tariff on of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors. But if you’re building in the United States of America, there’s no charge.”

Read more CNBC tech news

Trump had previously signaled that the duties on chips and semiconductors, which have become key components in virtually every industry, could come as soon as next week.

The remarks came after Trump touted a commitment by Apple to invest another $100 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, on top of the $500 billion the tech giant has previously pledged.

Several top chipmakers, including Taiwan Semiconductor, Nvidia and GlobalFoundries, have already pledged to manufacture some of their products in the U.S.

They’re not alone: More than 130 projects in the U.S. totaling $600 billion dollars have been announced since 2020, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip company, has pledged to invest a total of $165 billion in U.S. manufacturing.

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, said in April that it plans to spend $500 billion on AI infrastructure in the U.S. over the next four years.

GlobalFoundries pledged $16 billion in June to expand its semiconductor manufacturing at facilities in New York and Vermont.

Also in June, Texas Instruments announced a $60 billion boost to seven chip fabs in the U.S. The company counts Apple, Ford, Medtronic, Nvidia and SpaceX as customers.

Continue Reading

Technology

Apple and Trump detail $100 billion U.S. spending expansion, including $2.5 billion for an iPhone glass factory

Published

on

By

Apple and Trump detail 0 billion U.S. spending expansion, including .5 billion for an iPhone glass factory

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as Apple CEO Tim Cook gestures, as they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, while U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stand in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Apple CEO Tim Cook and President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that the iPhone maker will spend an additional $100 billion on U.S. companies and suppliers over the next four years.

The company said its investment would incentivize overseas companies to buy more U.S.-made parts. The commitment is on top of a $500 billion announcement that Apple made in February.

“This is the largest investment Apple has ever made in America and anywhere else,” Trump said. “As you know, Apple has been an investor in other countries a little bit, I won’t say which ones, but a couple, and they’re coming home.”

Trump said that he expects new U.S. factories to be built soon based on his policies.

“There are a lot of factories and a lot of plants that are either under construction or soon we’ll be starting construction,” Trump said. “So can’t tell you exactly when, but I want to be around a year from now.”

Apple on Wednesday said it created the so-called American Manufacturing Program that includes Corning, Coherent, GlobalWafers, Applied Materials, Texas Instruments, Samsung, GlobalFoundries, Amkor and Broadcom.

The company said it would spend $2.5 billion to fund a major expansion with Corning, which makes glass for iPhones in Kentucky. Apple said that all glass for iPhones and Apple Watches will be manufactured in the U.S. at Corning’s facility.

A gift given by Apple CEO Tim Cook to U.S. President Donald Trump stands on President Trump’s table, as they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

At the White House, Cook presented Trump with a souvenir based on Corning’s glass.

Apple also said it had a multiyear supply agreement with Coherent to produce lasers for the iPhone’s facial recognition system.

The company said its U.S.-based supply chain would produce more than 19 billion chips for its products this year. That’s including chips made by TSMC in Arizona, Apple said. It also includes U.S.-made wafers from GlobalWafers and chips from Texas Instruments. 

Apple said it would collaborate with Texas Instruments to install additional tools in factories in Utah and Texas. GlobalFoundries, a U.S.-based foundry that manufactures older chips particularly for the U.S. government, will manufacture wireless charging technology in New York for Apple.

The iPhone maker said its goal was to have an “end-to-end” supply chain, which means that every part of the chipmaking process can take place on American soil.

Earlier this year, Apple said it would invest $500 million in a rare earths miner and that it would build AI servers at a factory in Texas.

“Oh, I love that you’re doing this,” Trump said after reading a list of Apple’s announcements.

“President Trump shared some kind words about that work, but he also asked us to think about what more we could commit to doing,” Cook said about Apple’s earlier initial $500 billion commitment. “Mr. President, we took that challenge very seriously.”

Trump has criticized Apple and Cook for not making its smartphones in the U.S., a move that Apple has never signaled that it is likely to make. Experts say that moving production of a high-volume, complicated electronics product like the iPhone to the U.S. would be economically infeasible and could take years.

When asked about the possibility of making the iPhone in the U.S. on Wednesday, Cook said that many of the parts inside the device were made in the U.S.

“If you look at the bulk of it, we’re doing a lot of the semiconductors here, we’re doing the glass here, we’re doing the face ID module here,” Cook said.

Not Apple’s first U.S. commitment

Apple has made similar announcements in the past. In 2018, under pressure during the first Trump administration, Apple committed to spend $350 billion in the U.S. over five years, or about $70 billion per year. In 2021, Apple announced plans to spend $430 billion over five years, or $86 billion per year in the U.S. Wednesday’s announcement has the company at $600 billion over four years, or $125 billion per year. 

Much of what Apple has announced has come to fruition, although the company doesn’t report its U.S. spending on an annual basis and suppliers generally don’t break out how much revenue comes from Apple. 

The company also faces increased tariffs that could hurt its profits. It’s currently paying for tariffs placed on Chinese imports earlier this year, and faces increased import taxes on semiconductors when the Trump Administration finishes a so-called Section 232 investigation.

Trump said on Wednesday that he planned to impose a 100% tariff on semiconductors and chips, but that Apple was exempt because it is committing to build in the U.S.

Apple in May said that the majority of phones it’s selling in the U.S. are assembled in India to avoid Chinese tariffs, and although tariffs on India are going up to 25%, White House sources told CNBC that the iPhone maker will be “largely unaffected” by the India tariffs. Apple said that tariffs could cost the company $1.1 billion in the current quarter. 

In 2017, Apple announced that it was creating a $1 billion manufacturing fund, which would go towards future purchase commitments with U.S. suppliers. Apple raised that to $10 billion earlier this year.  Corning, one of the participants in Wednesday’s announcement, previously got two public commitments from Apple’s manufacturing fund. 

In 2021, Apple said that its U.S. spending was outpacing its initial 2018 announcement. In its initial announcement, the company said it would spend $10 billion on data centers in North Carolina, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and Iowa. Apple operates data centers in all those states today. 

Apple on Wednesday said it was expanding data centers in North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada and Oregon. 

WATCH: Apple’s bigger issue continues to be its missing AI, says Wedbush’s Dan Ives

Apple's bigger issue continues to be its missing AI, says Wedbush's Dan Ives

Continue Reading

Trending