OpenClaw adds Moonshot AI's Kimi and MiniMax as Chinese open-source AI models gain global appeal for cost and performance. — SCMP
Chinese open-source artificial intelligence models are being adopted by OpenClaw, the global hit AI agent, for their favourable balance of cost and performance, according to industry experts.
OpenClaw, which has been a runaway success since its late 2025 launch, announced on Friday that it was offering Chinese start-up Moonshot AI’s latest Kimi K2.5 and Kimi Coding agent for free in its service, while adding support for MiniMax, another Chinese foundational AI developer.
Analysts said Chinese open-source models were being picked up mostly for their “value for money” compared with other models, according to Luo Liang, a Beijing-based AI analyst at consultancy Intelligent Parameters.
Luo said many users had reported letting the autonomous agent run on its own, only to find it consumed large amounts of tokens – the basic units of text or data processed by AI models that directly affect computing costs – and incurred unexpected service bills.
Chinese open-source AI models – since the emergence of DeepSeek’s high-performance and low-cost V3 and R1 systems – have become known for their competitive pricing compared with US models.
Beijing-based Moonshot AI’s newly released Kimi K2.5, hailed as the strongest open-source AI model so far, costs US$0.58 (RM2.28) for every million input tokens and US$3 (RM11.78) for output.
The pricing is about one-ninth and one-eighth, respectively, of Anthropic’s most advanced model, Claude Opus 4.5, which charges US$5 (RM19.63) for 1 million input tokens and US$25 (RM98.17) for output.
Peter Steinberger, the developer behind OpenClaw, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why his AI agent chose to offer Moonshot AI’s Kimi model for free.
OpenClaw, billed as the “AI that actually does things”, has been making waves across mainland China and the global tech community, thanks to its ability to connect to a wide range of online services and carry out various tasks on users’ behalf.
Wang Shuyi, a professor specialising in AI and machine learning at Tianjin Normal University, said he used OpenClaw as a “task router”, giving directives such as conducting online research, drafting reports or even writing fiction before going to sleep, and “waking up the next day to examine the results”.
Wang added that he used the service on cloud platforms due to concerns over the safety of local files if he installed OpenClaw on his own computer.
Chinese AI cloud platforms – from Alibaba Cloud to Tencent Cloud – embraced the service last week to capitalise on its popularity. Local tech giants also enabled OpenClaw connections to their services, including Alibaba’s workplace collaboration platform DingTalk and Tencent’s WeCom, the office version of its messaging app WeChat. Alibaba Cloud is the AI and cloud computing unit of Alibaba Group Holding, which owns the South China Morning Post.
Some users were less worried about OpenClaw’s privacy challenges.
Mark Yang, a designer in Shanghai, said he used OpenClaw as a “virtual staff” to work on his assignments and reduce his workload, so he could have more time to think and live his life. Yang added that good user habits mattered more when it came to privacy control.
“Instead of worrying about privacy, I look more to [the AI agent’s] future evolution,” he added. – South China Morning Post
