Reason found? Kimi K 3 "collapsed" the US semiconductor market?
Recently, the semiconductor sector of the US stock market has plummeted, and Wall Street is also looking for reasons. They believe that the open source model K3 of the domestic large model Kimi has contributed to the decline. Dark Side of the Moon, a large domestic model company, released a new artificial intelligence model on July 17. Wall Street analysts believe that this model not only attracted global attention due to its powerful ability, but also caused violent shocks in global stock markets. The performance of the KimiK3 artificial intelligence model launched by Dark Side of the Moon in multiple industry benchmark tests is already comparable to the top products of OpenAI and AnthropicPBC.
Recently, the semiconductor sector of the US stock market has plummeted, and Wall Street is also looking for reasons. They believe that the open source model K3 of the domestic large model Kimi has contributed to the decline. Dark Side of the Moon, a large domestic model company, released a new artificial intelligence model on July 17. Wall Street analysts believe that this model not only attracted global attention due to its powerful ability, but also caused violent shocks in global stock markets. The performance of the Kimi K3 artificial intelligence model launched by Dark Side of the Moon in multiple industry benchmark tests is already comparable to the top products of OpenAI and Anthropic PBC. For a company that has long been under the halo of local rival DeepSeek, this breakthrough is surprising. Some analysts believe that investors are worried that the rise of Chinese artificial intelligence companies may force U.S. industry leaders such as Anthropic to reduce investment, which may further weaken product demand for industry giants such as Nvidia, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics. Shares of these companies all fell after Dark Side of the Moon released new models. U.S. companies are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in artificial intelligence infrastructure to run and improve models, with much of that money ultimately going to chipmakers. Programming is one of Advanced Model's most commercially valuable businesses. As Anthropic and OpenAI prepare for initial public offerings, programming is becoming an important source of revenue for both companies. Some analysts pointed out that if Dark Side of the Moon can provide a truly viable alternative, it may shake the foundation of its competitors' existing business models. Chinese artificial intelligence models have previously adopted aggressive pricing strategies, with prices generally lower than those of U.S. competitors. According to model review website Artificial Analysis, the weighted average cost of using Kimi 2.6 or DeepSeek V4 Flash to complete a standardized intelligence task is about 2 cents to 33 cents; in comparison, using Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 to complete the same task costs $2.75. Dark Side of the Moon's latest offering is priced relatively high compared to other Chinese models. According to the same ranking estimate, the Kimi K3 costs about 95 cents to complete the same task. "We used to say that open-source models, especially those in China, were about six to nine months behind state-of-the-art models," said Ian Stoica, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. "Now, that gap is probably only two or three months." The unexpected performance improvement of K3 shocked some observers and investors in the artificial intelligence industry and triggered a sharp decline in technology stocks, which is reminiscent of the market reaction when DeepSeek was launched last year. Similar to DeepSeek, the release of Kimi's new model has once again raised concerns about whether Silicon Valley's huge investment in artificial intelligence can pay off, and has also shaken the market's confidence in the United States' leadership in artificial intelligence. Aaron Levy, co-founder and CEO of cloud storage company Box, said: "I think, for a lot of people, this is really a surprise. Now the whole Silicon Valley is talking about this." Levi said that for an open model, the performance announced by K3 represents a "pretty major breakthrough." In an Arena ranking that evaluates the web development capabilities of artificial intelligence models, K3 ranked first. Stoica said that preliminary test results show that, especially in programming tasks, K3 is already "in the same level range" as Anthropic's Fable model and OpenAI's high-end GPT-5.6 Sol model. (