Moonshot AI suspended new consumer subscriptions for its Kimi K3 model on July 19 due to overwhelming demand that strained its computing infrastructure. “To protect the experience of existing subscribers, we’re temporarily pausing new subscriptions and prioritizing compute for current members,” the company stated via X. Existing subscribers will not be affected by this pause, and the company plans to reopen new subscription spots in batches.
Kimi K3, launched on July 16, features a 2.8 trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model with a one-million-token context window and native vision capabilities. The model is the largest open-weight system to approach the 3-trillion-parameter mark, surpassing DeepSeek V4’s 1.6 trillion parameters. User request volume exceeding projections in the first 48 hours came close to the upper limit of Moonshot’s GPU computing capacity.
Kimi K3 has received far more love than we expected, and our GPUs are feeling it.
Over the past 48 hours, demand has pushed close to the limits of our current capacity. To protect the experience of existing subscribers, we're temporarily pausing new subscriptions and…
— Kimi.ai (@Kimi_Moonshot) July 19, 2026
In response to the influx of users, the company will split its membership system into two distinct products: “Kimi Membership” for general web, app, and office use cases, and “Kimi Code Membership” tailored for programming workflows. This change aims to allocate computing resources more effectively.
Kimi K3 gained significant attention for its performance, ranking closely behind Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol in independent evaluations. It outperformed its rivals in specific tasks such as front-end coding and long-context work, according to reports from Reuters and CNBC. K3 attained a score of 57 on Artificial Analysis’s Intelligence Index, trailing Fable’s score of 60 and Sol’s score of 59.
The API pricing for Kimi K3 is set at $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, aligning with pricing for Anthropic’s Claude model but higher than that of competitors in China. Full model weights for Kimi K3 are expected to be released as open-source by July 27, which may help alleviate demand pressures on Moonshot’s infrastructure.
