Moonshot’s Kimi A3 may be more about memory than compute

When DeepSeek’s R1 debuted in early 2025, almost $600 billion was wiped out from Nvidia Corp.’s market value in a single day on fears that artificial intelligence would require less computing power than previously expected.

Moonshot AI’s release of Kimi K3 on Friday triggered a similar reaction, helping push semiconductor stocks sharply lower. The comparison, however, may overlook an important distinction.

While models such as Kimi K3 are designed to use computing resources more efficiently, they still require enormous amounts of memory to operate, a dynamic that could continue to support demand for companies including SK Hynix Inc., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Nvidia Corp. Kimi K3 contains 2.8 trillion parameters, China’s largest model yet, pushing the sparsity ratio — a measure of computing efficiency — to a record, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from disclosures from model producers. A higher ratio means fewer parameters are activated for each task relative to the model’s total size.

Read more at Bloomberg