Moonshot AI and Alibaba are moving toward revenue-sharing arrangements that lower upfront costs for commercial users while allowing the companies to claim a portion of profits generated by their models. Moonshot’s Kimi K3, released on July 27, is available to researchers and small developers at minimal cost, but companies exceeding $20 million in annual revenue must negotiate separately with Moonshot, with the licensing terms allowing revenue shares of up to 30%. Alibaba is reportedly preparing a similar framework for its upcoming Qwen3.8-Max model. Kimi K3 is priced at roughly one-third the cost of comparable Western models such as Anthropic’s Fable, making it attractive to cloud providers seeking customer growth, although the revenue obligations could reduce their margins. Moonshot has signed a revenue-sharing agreement with Chinasoft International, disclosed on July 20, and a commercial deployment deal with DigitalOcean. It is also in early-stage discussions with Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud over hosting Kimi K3, with potential revenue shares reportedly reaching 30%. Alibaba can host its models on Alibaba Cloud while also offering participation agreements to users deploying them on third-party infrastructure. Goldman Sachs analysts have identified a wider push among Chinese AI developers to secure more favorable economics when their models support commercial products. The $20 million threshold is intended to preserve low-cost access for researchers, hobbyists and early-stage developers while capturing value from larger businesses, but cloud providers must decide whether cheaper models justify ongoing revenue-sharing obligations.