Inside Alibaba's $800M bet on Kimi: from 'PPT company' to biggest AI win

elsewhere别处发生 · wechat · 2026-09-03

An in-depth recap of how Alibaba's investment made Moonshot AI's Kimi a major player:

Nov 2023: Alibaba's strategic investing arm put in $30M at a $600M valuation after internal tech review called Kimi a 'PPT company' and recommended against it. Investor Jiang Shanshan, with math/CS background, tracked down Yang Zhilin and pushed the deal up to CEO Eddie Wu, who decided quickly.
On Chinese New Year's Eve 2024, Wu personally doubled down to $800M, post-money valuation above $2.5B — then China's largest single funding round for an LLM startup (round total $1B+). Alibaba became Kimi's largest outside shareholder.
Meituan Longzhu actually moved first: took 4 months to reach Yang; Wang Xing overrode IC doubts with 'low odds, but I'll support it.' The $600M valuation was set at a dinner table. Longzhu later missed re-ups, a lesson Wang Xinyu called 'never lose your position on the most important deals,' re-entering at the $6B round in late 2025.
ByteDance reportedly also wanted in when Doubao lacked traction, but Zhang Yiming chose in-house models.
Aftermath: founder secondary sales at $1.5B valuation sparked controversy; investment lead Hu Xiao left and Jiang Shanshan was sidelined (she left Alibaba this August to start a fund). Disputes only quieted after Kimi K3's acclaim and Qwen's rise.
Structure: Kimi keeps super-voting rights; part of the funds sits in a joint account for Alibaba Cloud purchases — Alibaba is largest outside holder, Kimi stays independent.

The piece argues tomorrow's 'two big labs' in China may not be today's giants — and small labs need big-tech money to get there.

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