VCG/VCG via Getty ImagesChinese startup Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a powerful new model that has the tech world talking.Kimi K3 is the latest evidence that China is narrowing its AI gap with the US.Leaders from the US tech sector have been reacting to the new model online.Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 on Thursday, a powerful new model that the startup says is the largest open-weight AI system in the world.Moonshot says K3 still trails the most powerful proprietary models, Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol, overall, but beats the labs' second-tier systems, Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5, on benchmarks including coding and agentic tasks.Within a day, K3 topped Arena's frontend coding leaderboard, ahead of every leading US model, and placed third on Artificial Analysis's Intelligence Index.The release, timed just ahead of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, is the latest sign that Chinese labs are closing the gap with leading US systems.It also rattled AI-related markets: Moonshot, backed by Alibaba and Tencent, is valued at roughly $31.5 billion, a fraction of the trillion-dollar-plus valuations attached to Anthropic and OpenAI.Here's what smart people in the worlds of tech and academia are saying about it.David Sacks, cochair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and TechnologyDavid Sacks, former White House AI czar, expressed some skepticism over Anthropic's mythos warnings.Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty ImagesDavid Sacks, the venture capitalist who served as President Donald Trump's first AI and crypto czar before moving in March to cochair the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, called the release "concerning."In a Friday X post sharing the Arena leaderboard, Sacks said it was the first time a Chinese model had taken the top spot for frontend coding, with Kimi K3 also scoring at or near the frontier on other benchmarks.Sacks argued the US is hobbling itself in response: blocking new data centers, layering on state regulations, and pushing for federal agencies to pre-approve frontier models. "This is how you lose the AI race," he wrote, warning that the rest of the world won't play by America's rules if it bogs itself down."Permissionless innovation" is how America won the internet, Sacks said, adding that the US can win in AI while addressing risks in a targeted way, "or we'll watch our lead evaporate."Vinod Khosla, billionaire founder of Khosla VenturesVinod Khosla.Steven Ferdman/Getty ImagesIn response to Sacks' analysis of Kimi 3 on X, the billionaire Khosla Ventures founder, Vinod Khosla, said he agreed and highlighted what he called "an even bigger issue""Agree, 100% we shouldn't be tying ourselves in knots," he wrote on X. "Even bigger issue is the brilliant talent we are scaring away from other countries with our immigration policies for great talent."The Trump administration has moved to tighten immigration restrictions, including for student visas. Last year, Silicon Valley was rocked when the government introduced a $100,000 fee for employers sponsoring some new H-1B applications for foreign workers. The ruling was later struck down by a federal judge and remains in litigation.In May, a US Citizenship and Immigration Services memo implied that people who could previously apply for a green card from inside the US may now have to leave the country while their case is being processed.And just this week, the administration introduced a new rule that puts an expiration date on how long people on student visas can initially stay in the US.Aaron Levie, CEO of BoxKimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunchAaron Levie said the release was a "huge win" for companies building on AI.In an X post on Thursday, the Box CEO congratulated the Kimi team and said it was "truly wild" to see this level of performance from open models, pointing to Kimi K3's third-place ranking on Artificial Analysis' Intelligence Index — behind only Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol.Levie argued that cheaper frontier-level intelligence directly expands what enterprises can do with AI. There's a large backlog of workflows companies would love to automate, he said, held back only by token costs.Ethan Mollick, professor at the Wharton School of the University of PennsylvaniaEthan Mollick said young people should think more about tasks than skills.Business Wire/APEthan Mollick offered "a note of caution" amid the hype.The Wharton professor, who studies AI's effects on work, took to X to say Kimi K3 "messed up in a bunch of ways" when he asked it to perform a complex statistical audit of some of his prior academic work, including misapplying statistical methods.Mollick shared a detailed critique of K3's audit — generated, notably, by OpenAI's rival GPT-5.6 Pro model — that identified errors in the audit's core statistical approach. Mollick said he agreed with the critique.Jason Calacanis, investor and "All-In Podcast"
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