Kimi K3 offers those governments a way out. Every free model in the world, including China’s DeepSeek and Meta’s Llama, sits below Kimi K3. The savings from free models like Kimi K3 can be largest in the countries that have already bought the hardware. While software like Kimi K3 may cost nothing, the machines that run it come at a price. The Commerce Department went further last year and considered cutting off Chinese AI labs from U.S. technology altogether.