(Bloomberg) -- Crowds rushed to an obscure corner of China's premier tech summit, moving past monumental booths from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. to catch a glimpse of the hottest name in domestic AI.

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Developers and users at the World AI Conference jostled for a closer look at Moonshot and its Kimi K3 — the giant 2.8 trillion-parameter model whose release on Friday showed China was closing the gap on OpenAI and Anthropic PBC far quicker than anticipated. The startup became an instant global sensation, drawing comparisons to DeepSeek's 2025 breakout and plaudits from the likes of Elon Musk. Such was the crush over the weekend that Moonshot blew through its entire stock of branded swag in just a few hours.

Moonshot's emergence is a vindication not just for the country's AI industry, but also for founder Yang Zhilin. The reclusive 33-year-old was the poster child of Chinese AI in the post-ChatGPT era — an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University, Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google who'd been expected to help propel the country into the big leagues. Then DeepSeek emerged, and he's toiled in its shadow ever since.

Now, the spotlight has swiveled once more, putting Yang back at the forefront of China's industry.

Kimi K3 outperforms all rivals except for Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 on overall capability, according to Artificial Analysis. Musk lauded the model as "impressive," while OpenAI's head of strategy, Dean Ball, warned that the open-weight release pushes the tech world closer to "full AI communism." Investors are bullish, too. The startup is finalizing a funding round that will value it at more than $30 billion, ahead of a Hong Kong public listing in as soon as six months.

"OpenAI and Anthropic will be the iPhone, the Chinese models will be the Android," said entrepreneur and investor Kai-Fu Lee. "So that means the American closed models will make the most money but the Chinese models will get more market share," he said, adding that he estimates Chinese models are about six months behind US rivals.

Yang founded the 300-person outfit along with several technologists from prestigious Tsinghua University, including the lead guitarist of a band he started. They named the company's Chinese corporate entry after Dark Side of the Moon, Yang's favorite Pink Floyd album. His love for music is evident across the company. Yang named an earlier version of Kimi's AI agent OK Computer in honor of Radiohead, and the firm's meeting rooms sport names like Led Zeppelin, Queen and Nirvana. He also enjoys classical music: there's a white piano at the front of Moonshot's office and Kimi's subscription plans are named Adagio, Andante, and Moderato, after standard musical tempos.