If you think the acquisition of Manus by Meta for $2 billion is already shocking, then the billion dollar and "IPO sprint" events below are even more destructive. Moonshot AI: $500 million 'ammunition' for New Year's Eve Today (December 31st), Moonlit completed a $500 million Series C funding round. Valuation: The post investment valuation has been pushed up to $4.3 billion. Investor: IDG leads investment of $150 million, with Alibaba, Tencent, and Wang Huiwen (who has recently been very aggressive in AI investment) following suit. Signal: This money is prepared for Kimi's "long slope thick snow", indicating that the competition for domestic large models in "long text+long reasoning" will be even more fierce next year. 2. MiniMax&Zhipu AI: Embarking on the "Year of AI IPO" These two companies are competing for the first share of domestically produced large models, and the progress is astonishingly fast: MiniMax (Dream of the Name): Officially launched IPO subscription in Hong Kong on December 31st, planning to raise $600 million. Super investors: Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) and Alibaba, as cornerstone investors, have an extremely luxurious lineup. Knowledge Atlas: Following suit, it has submitted an application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange seeking to raise HKD 4.3 billion. Signal: This marks the end of the era of "burning money to support" big models in the primary market, and big model companies are officially accepting the profit test of the secondary market. 3. OpenAI: The $500 Billion Devourer OpenAI completed an epic secondary market stock transfer between October and December. Valuation: soared to $500 billion, officially surpassing SpaceX and ByteDance, becoming the world's most valuable private technology company. Data disclosure: Ultraman revealed that the weekly active users of ChatGPT have exceeded 800 million. Its current strategy is no longer to create models, but to develop "AI operating systems" and enter the active agent market through the recently launched OpenAI Pulse. 4. xAI (Elon Musk): $15 billion 'infrastructure maniac' Musk's xAI completed a $15 billion Series E funding round in December. Valuation: Reaching 200 billion US dollars. Purpose: This astronomical amount of funds is almost entirely used to buy NVIDIA GPUs. Musk is expanding his "Colossus" supercomputer in Memphis with the goal of training a model that surpasses GPT-5 next year. 5. Mistral AI (European Light): Backed by chip giants Mistral AI in France recently completed a $2 billion funding round. Key point: The leading investor is the lithography machine giant ASML. Strategy: This vertical integration of lithography machines and AI models is unprecedented, with the goal of establishing European AI sovereignty and reducing dependence on American and Chinese technology. Summary: The Three Truths of AI at the End of 2025 Agents become a new battlefield: Meta buys Manus, OpenAI pushes Pulse, both indicating that "dialogue" is dead and "action" is the future. IPO wave begins: IPOs like MiniMax and Zhipu mean that the model layer is entering a stage of harvesting and survival of the fittest. It is said that Anthropic is also preparing for an IPO Valuation inversion: The valuation of top AI companies has deviated from traditional revenue models (with extremely high PS multiples), and capital is buying a "ticket to General Artificial Intelligence (AGI)". Reflection: How can ordinary people participate in this AI capital feast? Comment section for answers