Recurrent AI

Recurrent AI (循环智能) is an AI company best known as the parent of Moonshot AI, the developer of the Kimi chatbot, and for the arbitration dispute that erupted when founder Yang Zhilin left to start Moonshot . The company operated in the To B space, offering industry-specific large language model applications—one of its early projects was showcased at Huawei's Asia-Pacific ICT Summit 2024 in Thailand as a Huawei AI partner .

The company's investor base included GSR Ventures (金沙江创投), ZhenFund (真格基金), Boyu Capital (博裕资本), Wanwu Capital (万物资本), and others . Yutong Zhang (张予彤), then a GSR Ventures investor, served as a board representative and had also made an angel investment in Recurrent AI .

The fracture came in November 2024, when several of Recurrent AI's investors—reportedly five out of seven, including GSR Ventures—filed arbitration in Hong Kong against Yang Zhilin and co-founder Zhang Yutao, alleging that Yang's departure to found Moonshot AI (月之暗面) had not properly addressed equity interests Recurrent AI held in the new venture . Yang maintained he had obtained all necessary board approvals and procedures before leaving . The case became one of the most closely watched founder-investor conflicts in Chinese AI, with some Moonshot AI investors viewing the new company as a genuine "spin-off and restart" rather than a continuation .