Experts Doubt Moonshot Built Kimi K3 by Distilling Fable, as US Alleges GB300 Chip Use
Updated
Updated · TechCrunch · Jul 23
Experts Doubt Moonshot Built Kimi K3 by Distilling Fable, as US Alleges GB300 Chip Use
3 articles · Updated · TechCrunch · Jul 23
Summary
AI researchers said Moonshot’s Kimi K3 likely could not have been built mainly by distilling Anthropic’s Fable, arguing the model was released too quickly after Fable’s July 1 debut.
Braden Hancock and Nathan Lambert said supervised fine-tuning alone would not explain K3’s strength, and that matching Fable-like capabilities would more likely require reinforcement learning and far larger infrastructure.
Michael Kratsios, the White House science adviser, accused Moonshot of covertly copying U.S. models and using Nvidia Grace Blackwell 300 chips or GB300-equipped servers in Thailand, but offered no supporting evidence.
Anthropic had already accused Moonshot, DeepSeek and MiniMax of capability extraction earlier this year, saying it found millions of suspicious exchanges, though distillation remains common across the AI industry.
The chip allegation points to a broader enforcement gap: banned Nvidia hardware can still reach China through black markets, and proposed U.S. know-your-customer rules for data centers have stalled.