Kimi Environmental Impact
China's popular long-context AI assistant
Energy per query
1.2 Wh
4x more than a Google search (0.3 Wh)
CO2 per query
0.63 g
China grid (525 gCO₂/kWh)
Water per query
4 mL
~227 queries to fill 1 litre
Processing location
Moonshot AI Cloud (China)
Provider
Moonshot AI
Category
Text / Chat
Grid carbon intensity
525 g CO2/kWh (33% renewable)
How does Kimi compare?
Detailed Breakdown
Energy Consumption
Kimi is known for its exceptionally long context window (up to 2M tokens). At ~1.2 Wh for a short query, energy scales dramatically with context length — long-context queries can consume 10-50x more. Kimi is one of China's most popular AI assistants.
Power Source & Carbon
Runs on Chinese data centre infrastructure, subject to China's coal-heavy grid.
Water Usage
At ~4.4 mL per short query. Long-context queries with millions of tokens would consume significantly more.
About Kimi
Kimi is a text and chat model from Moonshot AI, released in March 18, 2024. China's popular long-context AI assistant. Each query uses 1.2 Wh of energy and produces 0.63 g of CO₂. That's about 4.0x what a Google search consumes.
These figures are estimates derived from hardware specifications and API benchmarks — Moonshot AI has not published official energy data for Kimi. Actual consumption may vary significantly depending on batching, quantisation, and infrastructure optimisations that we cannot observe from outside.
What does your Kimi usage cost the planet?
Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use Kimi.
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How much energy does Kimi use per query?
Each Kimi query consumes approximately 1.2 Wh of energy. This is 4x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).
What is Kimi's carbon footprint?
Based on the carbon intensity of Moonshot AI Cloud (China), each query produces approximately 0.63 g of CO2. The grid in this region has a carbon intensity of 525 g CO2/kWh with 33% renewable energy.
How much water does Kimi use?
Each query consumes approximately 4 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.
How does Kimi compare to a Google search?
A Kimi query uses 4x more than a Google search in terms of energy. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while Kimi uses 1.2 Wh.
Technical Details
Architecture
Dense Transformer (long-context optimised)
Context window
2,000,000 tokens
Release date
2024-03-18
Open source
No
Training data cutoff
2024-06