[DigitalToday intern reporter Seung-ah Yoo] China's artificial intelligence (AI) model Kimi K3 has temporarily suspended new subscription sign-ups as users flocked to it immediately after launch.

Bloomberg reported on July 20 that developer Moonshot AI decided not to accept new sign-ups for the time being to prioritise support for existing subscribers.

The move came days after Kimi K3 was unveiled. Moonshot AI said on X, formerly Twitter, and Chinese social media, "Kimi K3 has received far more interest than we expected," and that demand over the past 48 hours had pushed close to the limits of its current capacity. It said it would prioritise existing subscribers and temporarily pause new subscriptions.

Moonshot AI said it would quickly secure additional computing resources and reopen new subscriptions in sequence. "We are increasing capacity as quickly as possible and will reopen new subscription slots step by step," the company added.

Kimi K3 is a Chinese open-source AI model unveiled late last week. It is seen as a product that has thrown down a challenge to high-performance models from leading U.S. companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI. The model has 2.8 trillion parameters and is considered the world's largest among publicly available AI models.

Performance metrics also drew attention immediately after launch. In the Arena rankings of an AI model evaluation platform, Kimi K3 ranked No. 1 among major high-performance AI models in front-end coding ability after its release. It highlights how Chinese AI models, backed by a low-cost open-source strategy, are quickly drawing global attention.

The episode also exposed the infrastructure burden faced by China's AI industry. Lian Jye Su (리안 지에 수), a principal analyst at market research firm Omdia, said that when massive interest pours in at the launch of a new model, it can strain existing computing infrastructure, and that the situation shows Moonshot AI has not secured enough computing chips to handle the current surge in demand. He noted that K3 requires very large computing resources, making resource allocation difficult and costs high.

Lian Jye Su also pointed to the possibility that Moonshot AI failed to forecast demand as a key cause. He said it was more likely the company did not sufficiently anticipate K3's popularity. Building a presence in competition over model performance and matching that with actual service-operating capability are separate issues, he said.

Lian Jye Su also pointed to the possibility that Moonshot AI failed to forecast demand as a key cause. He said it was more likely the company did not sufficiently anticipate K3's popularity. Building a presence in competition over model performance and matching that with actual service-operating capability are separate issues, he said.

Kimi K3's emergence also weighed on U.S. technology stocks. The market raised concerns that Chinese AI models with strong price competitiveness could weaken U.S. AI companies' pricing power and demand. Growing wariness has been fuelled by the fact that Chinese models are expanding their influence even as the United States has already blocked access to some key technologies, including cutting-edge chips.

Chinese companies are also continuing to unveil new models. Alibaba previewed its latest AI model, Qwen3.8 Max, over the weekend. Alibaba said the model has 2.4 trillion parameters, ranks among the world's top-tier models, and is second only to Anthropic's Fable5. Last month, Chinese startup Z.ai also unveiled GLM-5.2, which was also rapidly adopted worldwide.

Chinese AI companies are now tasked with securing computing infrastructure capable of meeting real service demand while building their presence in the performance race. The pause in new subscriptions for Kimi K3 has remained a case that shows both the speed of expansion and the limits of Chinese AI models.

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…