Alibaba and Moonshot Shift Open-Source AI Models to Revenue-Sharing, Ending Free Access

Chinese AI companies Alibaba and Moonshot are reportedly moving away from entirely free access for their open-source, open-weight AI models, implementing licensing terms that require revenue sharing from partners. Moonshot's Kimi K3 model, for instance, mandates commercial agreements for services generating over $20 million in annual sales, with Moonshot requiring up to a 30% revenue share. Alibaba also plans to introduce a revenue-sharing model for its Qwen3.8-Max. This marks a significant shift in the business model for open-source AI, contrasting with the closed-source approaches of U.S. developers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.