According to 21 Finance, on July 21, Kimi's enterprise business head Huang Zhenxin responded to market concerns. Huang clearly stated: 'Open-source models and Chinese large models should not be labeled as low-cost. We have developed a SOTA-level model and can justify reasonable commercial pricing.' Addressing external speculation that 'K3 is a distilled small model,' Huang clarified that the core of K3's performance leap comes from underlying original architectural innovation, not from distilling or replicating existing models. On the commercialization front, Huang revealed that Kimi currently does not offer private deployment services. Its business model benchmarks mature overseas AI leaders, focusing on refining fundamental model capabilities. API business accounts for the highest proportion of the company's revenue; specific revenue breakdowns for private deployment and industry solutions have not been disclosed. Meanwhile, he outlined the trend in model parameter scale: large model parameter sizes will continue to expand upward and will not stop at the current 2.8 trillion. Addressing the open-source vs. closed-source debate, Huang believes the two are not opposing competitive relationships. Enterprise clients have differentiated needs: those requiring private deployment and fine-tuning prefer open-source, while those seeking stable managed services choose closed-source. Open-source or closed-source itself is not inherently tied to model token quality. Kimi has adhered to an open-source route since K2, and this approach will not change in the future. Core underlying technologies and papers are publicly disclosed, maintaining an open attitude toward the industry. Regarding Musk's claim that Grok 4.5 might surpass K3, Huang responded: 'We'll wait and see.' When asked about the difference between Kimi's open-source model and other domestic large models, Huang explained: The global open-source industry has standardized licensing agreements like MIT; Kimi adopts internationally accepted open-source licenses. The misconception that Kimi cannot be privately deployed stems from the current massive parameter size of K3 and high deployment thresholds, which is unrelated to the open-source licensing strategy itself.
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