Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark

Simon Willison's Weblog · 3 months ago · 41 ● 7 sources

Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion parameter model available via API with open weights promised by July 27, 2026, positioning it as the first open 3-trillion parameter model. The model costs $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, making it the most expensive Chinese AI lab model to date and comparable to Anthropic's Claude Sonnet pricing. The author demonstrates K3's capabilities through a pelican-riding-a-bicycle benchmark test, which generates a 16,658-token response costing 25 cents, while reflecting on how this once-useful comparison metric has diminished in correlation with actual model quality as capabilities have advanced.