What GPU do I need to run moonshotai/Kimi-K2-Base?
1026.5B parameters, published in F8_E4M3. View on Hugging Face
Set up Kimi-K2-BaseKimi-K2-Base is published by moonshotai on Hugging Face, with 14,303 downloads and 306 likes to date. It's a DeepseekV3ForCausalLM model built for text-generation, published natively in F8_E4M3.
VRAM required & cheapest live GPU fit
Required VRAM = weight size at each precision, plus a fixed overhead for KV-cache, activations, and fragmentation. Full formula and assumptions: methodology.
| Precision | Weight size | Required VRAM | Cheapest live fit | GPUs needed | Est. $/hr (full fit) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP8 (native) | 956.0 GB | 1147.2 GB | No capable live offer found | – | – |
| INT4 (quantized) | 478.0 GB | 573.6 GB | RTX PRO 6000 | 6 | $9.24/hr |
A GPU is only matched to a row if its hardware supports that precision, and the primary recommendation is always a single-GPU fit when one exists.
INT4 requires a quantized checkpoint actually published for this model, check its Hugging Face page before relying on this row.
Kimi-K2-Base: common questions
Can Kimi-K2-Base run on a single GPU?
Not on a desktop card. At FP8 (native) it needs 1147.2 GB of VRAM, more than a single 32 GB desktop card holds. No card currently listed on the marketplace both supports FP8 (native) and has enough VRAM for it, so how many it would take is not something this page can answer today.
Is Kimi-K2-Base already quantized?
Yes. It is published in FP8, one byte per parameter, so the 1147.2 GB figure is already a quantized footprint rather than a full-precision one. Only INT4 goes below it, at 573.6 GB. A GPU without FP8 tensor cores cannot run it as published, which is why cards here are matched on precision support and not on VRAM alone.
Weight-to-VRAM math, the fit rules, and how live prices are normalized: full methodology.
More Kimi K2 models
- Kimi-K2-Instruct-0905 (1026.5B, F8_E4M3)
- Kimi-K2-Instruct (1026.4B, F8_E4M3)
- Kimi-K2.5 (1026.9B, Native INT4)
- kimi-k2.6-eagle3-mla (3.0B, BF16)
Related reading: H100 pricing and specs, The best GPUs for AI, ranked, and Best GPU for LLM inference.
