According to The Wall Street Journal, Moonshot AI is reorganizing its corporate structure in preparation for an IPO in Hong Kong.
The key step involved removing the overseas holding structure: The Cayman Islands-based holding company would be discontinued, and the shares held by early dollar investors would be transferred to the domestic operating entity.
Taking this step usually means that the location for listing the company has been basically determined. The Cayman structure is designed specifically for companies aiming to list on the US stock market or the Hong Kong Stock Market through the “red chip” regime. By dismantling this structure and returning to a domestic legal entity, such companies are following a path that better complies with domestic regulatory requirements. For a company that is developing large-scale artificial intelligence models and needs to process a vast amount of domestic user data, this approach will significantly simplify the approval process.
The consequence is that the exit process for dollar-denominated funds becomes more complicated. Once the shares end up in domestic entities, subsequent currency conversion and withdrawal procedures will need to be rearranged. Such reorganizations often take several months to finalize. The fact that things have progressed to this stage indicates that the major shareholders have given their consent.
Everyone has seen Kimi's situation over the past two years: The company started out by focusing on long-form content, went through a period where substantial investments were required to drive user growth, and then managed to regain a good reputation among developers thanks to the open-source K series models.
Among domestic large-scale model companies, Zhipu and MiniMax have already embarked on the path to going public one after another. If everything goes well for Moonlight Side as well, then the “wave of listings” involving these leading firms will be complete.