(Yicai) Nov. 13 -- Moonshot AI has decided to halt the content and updates of its overseas products, with the heads of the related business having both left the Chinese startup to work on new projects, LatePost reported.

Moonshot AI made the decision to stop updating its overseas consumer-facing products Ohai and Noisee in September, according to LatePost, a unit of Caijing Magazine, which cited the company. Both were launched early this year.

The Beijing-based firm said the products were just experiments and had not been launched officially. Moonshot AI is now focusing more on the development of its flagship chatbot product, Kimi Chat, the company said.

Former Noisee product manager, Ming Chaoping, has started a new project and has already raised enough funds for a valuation of USD50 million, with some of the investment coming from two shareholders in Moonshot AI. Ohai ex-manager also departed recently to start a new venture.

According to sources close to Moonshot AI, these are not isolated cases of staff turnover at the company. Since the beginning of this year, employees in various departments have left, with some starting their own businesses and others working on projects overseas.

Moonshot AI was founded in March 2023 by Yang Zhilin, a graduate of Tsinghua University. In February 2024, it secured USD1 billion in an A+ round fundraiser from investors such as HongShan, Xiaohongshu, and Alibaba Group Holding. In August, it banked an additional USD300 million from backers, including Tencent Holdings.

Kimi Chat can handle up to 2 million characters of text input, and its number of monthly active users surpassed 10 million last month, ranking it just behind ByteDance’s Doubao and Baidu’s Ernie Bot.

Editor: Tom Litting