Giving Options Before Graduation: Dark Side of the Moon Launches "Transcendence Plan," Locking in Top Talent of the 27th Generation a Year Early

According to 1M AI News monitoring, AI startup Moon's Dark Side (parent company of Kimi) is about to launch a campus recruitment plan named the "Leap Program" targeting the graduating class of 2027, with an initial quota of 16 spots. Selected candidates, after a 3- to 6-month internship observation period, will be directly granted company stock options before their formal graduation. This program is open to all positions and has no strict requirements regarding major, degree, or experience.

Granting options to interns before graduation is relatively rare in the industry. Internet and AI companies usually only provide equity incentives to full-time employees. The key attraction of Moon's Dark Side's move lies in the rapid growth of the option price: with an estimated valuation of around $4 billion in November last year, the company has since climbed to the top tier internationally with the new K2.5 model and market optimism from OpenClaw, completing three rounds of financing within three months, raising its valuation to $18 billion, with the option price increasing by over 4 times.

Moon's Dark Side currently has about 300 employees, featuring an extremely flat organizational structure with no job titles, OKRs, and a simplified reporting line. Founder Yang Zhilin once flew from Beijing to Shenzhen to chat for ten hours with a tech talent and then rushed back to catch an early morning flight. Another recent talent case of interest in the company is 17-year-old high school intern Chen Guangyu, a co-first author of the Kimi Attention Residuals paper, which was openly praised by Musk.