Chinese AI researchers from Moonshot, DeepSeek, Minimax and Z.ai are moving expert discussion to the platform X
According to Wired, employees and co-founders of the Chinese AI companies Moonshot, DeepSeek, Minimax and Z.ai are increasingly discussing model development on the platform X because, in their view, Chinese networks such as Zhihu do not support high-quality technical discussion.
According to Wired, the number of Chinese AI researchers actively discussing AI development and commercialization on the platform X has increased over the past year. Using the company Moonshot AI (the creator of the model Kimi K3) as an example, a reporter for the publication says he managed to find approximately 30 accounts belonging to people who identify themselves as current or former employees or collaborators of Moonshot, including two co-founders of the company and a number of former employees and collaborators. According to the article, these are active accounts whose owners comment on major model updates as well as individual research papers from the company, connect with Western researchers, and also share personal content. According to Wired, employees of Minimax and Z.ai show similar activity on X, as do people from DeepSeek who, according to the report, regularly write about AI news and post job openings, even though, according to earlier reports, the Chinese state confiscated their passports.
According to Meng Fanqing, a co-founder of the startup Evolvent AI and a former intern at Moonshot (who worked on the model Kimi K2.5), “X is currently the best community” for discussions about AI because it brings together Chinese and international audiences, and its recommendation algorithm effectively targets content to people with similar interests. Meng dates his shift to actively posting on X to mid-2025, saying that the impetus was the viral success of the model DeepSeek R1 in early 2025, after which, in his words, Chinese researchers began taking a greater interest in building personal brands internationally. Independent AI analyst and former researcher at Hugging Face Tiezhen Wang adds that lower activity among researchers from OpenAI and Anthropic also plays a role: according to him, they share fewer insights because they consider their architecture and model training methods sensitive company know-how.
The article also cites the decline of Zhihu as a reason why Chinese researchers prefer X to domestic platforms. According to the source, Zhihu has seen a decrease in expert contributors and an increase in low-quality content (one example mentioned is mathematician Deng Yu, a recipient of the Fields Medal this year, who stopped posting on Zhihu back in 2018). Although the platform Xiaohongshu (RedNote) is attracting younger junior researchers, according to the article, its audience is less technical. As an illustration, the author cites a research paper from Moonshot published in March that was also praised by Elon Musk, while on Zhihu and Xiaohongshu, according to an anonymous employee at Moonshot, the discussion focused mainly on the age and family backgrounds of the authors (one of them is 17 years old), rather than the technical content. According to Wired, Moonshot did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the article, alongside the desire for expert discussion, marketing interests are also involved: Meng compares the AI industry today to the financial sector, where every company and individual builds their own brand. Wang says that during a one-off consultation in 2025, he advised Moonshot to put its researchers more prominently in the spotlight on social media because personal posts generate more feedback and potential collaboration than official press releases. The source text was not available in full. You can find details in the source article.
Why it matters
The shift of Chinese AI researchers to X is changing where early signals about new models and research from companies such as Moonshot, DeepSeek, Minimax or Z.ai can be tracked — according to the article, technical discussion there is of higher quality than on the domestic networks Zhihu and Xiaohongshu. For international observers of the AI scene and competing companies, the trend described suggests that following the accounts of individual researchers on X may provide information (including job postings from DeepSeek) faster than waiting for official company announcements.
Two audiences, two different impacts
What this means
For individuals
According to the article, anyone who wants to follow the development of Chinese models (Kimi, DeepSeek) will find more up-to-date and technically in-depth discussion on the platform X through the accounts of employees and co-founders of these companies than on the Chinese networks Zhihu or Xiaohongshu.
More practical updates →For a business
According to the article, companies tracking Chinese AI competitors may find useful signals (model updates, recruitment) on the platform X rather than on Chinese networks such as Zhihu or Xiaohongshu, where, according to the source, Chinese researchers and companies such as DeepSeek are moving some of their communications and job postings.
Sales and marketing More business impacts →Check the original
Event sources
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