Open weights just got a revenue split. moonshot's kimi k3 landed on aws bedrock september 18 under…
open weights just got a revenue split. moonshot's kimi k3 landed on aws bedrock september 18 under a new model where the foreign cloud hosts the model and shares the revenue, a first for a chinese open model.
the business model became the moat.
Context
AWS's what's-new post of 18 September 2026 says Kimi K3 is generally available on Amazon Bedrock in all Bedrock Regions via cross-Region inference, and its blog says data is processed within the AWS boundary and not shared with the model provider. Reuters (26 August 2026), citing anonymous sources, reported Moonshot seeking up to a 30 percent share in early-stage talks with Microsoft, Amazon and Google, and that such a pact could mark the first big revenue-sharing deal between a Chinese AI firm and a major US cloud company. SCMP (21 September 2026) says neither company has publicly disclosed financial terms and that the arrangement appears to have triggered the updated license, which requires a paid arrangement above 20 million dollars in aggregate annual hosting revenue.
The Bedrock listing is first-party. A revenue split is not confirmed: AWS says nothing about it, Reuters reports a talks ask of up to 30 percent and not a deal, and terms are undisclosed. A first for a Chinese open model is the note's superlative, and Reuters' wording is conditional and about a prospective deal. The license threshold should be quoted from the license text and not paraphrased. No source shows a Microsoft or Google listing.
Related work
- Earlier note on Moonshot's revenue talks ↗The August talks, the 30 percent ask and the license.
Watch next
- Any AWS or Moonshot statement on terms.
Sources
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 21 September 2026 at 16:05 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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