Voice assistantsSpeech to text

Kimi-Audio

A general-purpose audio model: speech recognition, answering questions about sounds, detecting emotions and voice dialogue. Trained on 13 million hours of audio; languages are English and Chinese.

Developer
Moonshot AI, China
First release
Apr 2025
Latest release
Apr 2025
Sizes
7B
License
Commercial use allowedMIT (part of the code based on Qwen 2.5: Apache 2.0)
Russian
Not supported
Running
On your own serverNeeds a GPU
Industries
Customer support, Media and production
Deploy on your server Hugging Face GitHub

What it does

  • Speech recognition
  • Detecting emotions and sound events
  • Speech-to-speech voice dialogue

Where it is used

Call centresMediaVoice bots

Hardware requirements

LaptopLaptop or regular PC, up to 8 GB of VRAM — smaller versions
no versions
1 GPUOne GPU with 16–80 GB — mid-size versions
fits
ClusterServer with several GPUs — flagship versions
no versions

Versions

  1. Kimi-Audio-7B и 7B-Instruct

How to run it

On your own serverWeights are downloaded from Hugging Face and served with vLLM (load and API) or llama.cpp (modest hardware). The model then runs in a closed network with no per-request fees.Hugging Face
How much hardware you needCalculate the VRAM for the model size, context length and number of concurrent requests.Open the hardware calculator

I can set this up end to end: pick the model size, deploy it on your server and connect it to your systems.

Frequently asked questions

Can Kimi-Audio be used in a commercial project?

Yes. License: MIT (part of the code based on Qwen 2.5: Apache 2.0). It allows commercial use, but it is still worth having a lawyer review the license before launch.

What hardware does Kimi-Audio need?

At minimum: One GPU with 16–80 GB — mid-size versions. Without a GPU the model is not practical. You can calculate the exact VRAM for your model size and context in the hardware calculator.

Does Kimi-Audio support Russian?

No. The model card lists its languages and Russian is not among them.

Where can I download Kimi-Audio and what does it cost?

The Kimi-Audio weights are open and free to download. You only pay for the hardware it runs on and for the setup. Source links are at the bottom of this page.

How I deploy it for clients

  1. SelectionI pick the model size for your task and hardware and test it on your examples.
  2. DeploymentI deploy it on your server or in a closed network and provide an API.
  3. Fine-tuningI fine-tune it on your data (LoRA) or connect a knowledge base — whichever is cheaper for the task.
  4. IntegrationI connect it to your CRM, ERP, bot, website or team chat and set up monitoring.

Similar models

Voice assistantsQwen OmniAlibaba (Qwen) · ChinaCommercial use allowed

Models that understand text, images, audio and video and reply by voice in real time. Qwen3-Omni speaks 10 languages, including Russian.

DetailsVoice assistantsMiniCPM-oOpenBMB (ModelBest, Tsinghua University) · ChinaCommercial use allowed

A small model that sees, hears and replies by voice in real time, and can clone a voice. Voice dialogue in English and Chinese, text in 30+ languages.

DetailsVoice assistantsAudio FlamingoNVIDIA · USANon-commercial only

Models that listen to speech, sounds and music and answer questions about them. Audio Flamingo Next handles recordings up to 30 minutes. Research use only.

Details

Source: huggingface.co/moonshotai/Kimi-Audio-7B-Instruct. Data checked against the model card on 22 Sep 2026. Have a lawyer review the license before commercial launch.