OpenAI’s Astra Model Becomes Top Distillation Target for China’s AI Labs

According to The Information : Moonshot AI distilled Astra during the development of its new model, Kimi K3.1 Pro, which was released last week , according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter. Similarly, DeepSeek’s V4.1-Flash 1017, an Oct. 17 upgrade to its V4.1-Flash model that demonstrated substantial improvements from the original version released in September, also benefitted from distilling Astra, according to two other people with direct knowledge of that. Until recently, Anthropic’s Claude models were the biggest target of Chinese distillation efforts. Moonshot didn’t comment. DeepSeek didn’t respond to a request for comment. Anthropic and OpenAI have both repeatedly accused Chinese labs including Moonshot and DeepSeek of distilling their models. https://x.com/kimmonismus/status/2115610660470186480