Kimi K3 Open Weights

What the open-weight release means — and the honest self-hosting reality.

Release & licence

Moonshot plans to publish the full Kimi K3 weights by July 27, 2026 under a Modified MIT licence. Until the weights and final licence are published, K3 should be treated as "open-weight pending," not a downloadable open model.

Self-hosting reality

The full model recommends deployment configurations with at least 64 accelerators. For most individuals and small teams, the practical path is the hosted API rather than local inference.

Limitations to watch

Weights and final licence were pending at launch.
No K3-specific safety report was published at launch.
Long-context reliability at 1M tokens is not automatically guaranteed.
Independent testing noted slower output and higher verbosity than average.

Related: specs & architecture, pricing.

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Frequently Asked Questions

When are the Kimi K3 weights released?

Moonshot scheduled the full model weights for release by July 27, 2026. Verify the actual publication date and final licence on the official channels.

Under what licence are the Kimi K3 weights released?

Moonshot described the release as a Modified MIT licence. The final licence terms should be confirmed when weights publish.

Can I run Kimi K3 on a PC?

No. Moonshot recommends deployment with at least 64 accelerators. Self-hosting the full model is far beyond ordinary consumer hardware.