Moonshot's Kimi K3 Freezes New Signups Within 48 Hours Due to GPU Shortage

Chinese AI firm Moonshot launched its Kimi K3 model, only to suspend new subscriptions within 48 hours after demand overwhelmed its available GPU capacity. The model, built on 2.8 trillion open-weight parameters, reportedly outperformed rivals from Anthropic and OpenAI on front-end coding benchmarks, drawing a surge of developer interest. Moonshot allowed existing users to retain access and announced plans to reopen signups in batches as it expands infrastructure. The company also introduced two separate membership tiers — one for general use and another focused on programming — reflecting the heavier compute demands of coding workloads. The incident highlights a broader industry shift, where the primary AI bottleneck is moving from model training to inference, as long-running agentic tasks consume far more compute per user than traditional chatbot interactions.