I know we have strong views on what a truly open model is (open weights, open training data, open training code etc.) but I really like how transparent they’ve been about the training of this model.
The realtime dashboard they shared during training (https://mimo.xiaomi.com/rl/) was an incredible learning and teaching tool for me, and they’ve been unusually comprehensive in sharing details about their methodology (check out that tech report - it's got lots of clever behind the scene tricks like Google or Deepseek writeups) and benchmark scores (even the stuff they didn’t do well on).
If you’re releasing an open model going forward, please consider offering the community more of this transparency!
Thanks so much for sharing this. As someone who mostly watches from the sideline, can you share what you can see in this dashboard that someone like me can't see? Is it the metrics themselves that they measure (the metrics tab is absurdly detailed), something in the notices, or something else I missed?
Absolutely! Chinese models are both cheaper and more capable in many cases, compared to the American models and their makers continuously fumbling or reducing model capability with each update. Deepseek decreased costs when they released Flash 4.1 you would not see any American company do this, in reverse they would try charge you more.
OpenAI decreased prices with the 5.6 model family.
And later they further cut Sol and Terra pricing by 20% (maybe only in the API) and Luna by 80%.
In fact Luna still outperformed DeepSeek Flash 4.1 in cost per task on Artificial Analysis when I last checked. However, Luna is slightly less intelligent.
The competition is great, and I hope Chinese models will continue to force leading US labs to offer models at a low price point.
That said, I don't think the Chinese labs have anything over OpenAI and Anthropic when it comes to capability or efficiency - I have no reason not to believe the US labs have even lower cost to serve the models.
Because at present the pedophile US president is making it his mission to molest my country. China, for all its faults and espionage (which the US is also guilty of) is just trying to conduct trade.
Also, frankly, as a fellow Canadian it's pretty clear that the biggest "rival" the US has right now is itself. Just passed out in the corner puking on itself shouting about all the foreigners who won't talk to it.
Looking at the frontend design examples; why do these models seem to love the "01 - UPPERCASE TEXT" motif. It's everywhere now (see https://try.cloudflare.com/, which has '01 · QUICK TUNNELS', but no "02" anywhere).
My guess is that by function they break down frontend sections or components into pieces and I believe document things for themselves on some level, or purposely are verbose in this way. It is probably also shaped by users and existing web patterns. They probably get reinforced by models the more common they become.
All these new models are such tease for us folks with 128GB of shared memory. Buying another unit now to expand to 256GB is a mortgage payment but it’s getting tempting…
You could always stream from SSD storage. Especially effective if you get a cheap old-gen HEDT with lots of PCIe slots to add NVMe storage to and reasonable overall PCIe bandwidth.
You can definitely offload n-gram embeddings to storage; they're very sparsely used (only a few KB fetched per token) so this is quite effective. Loading to DRAM only becomes necessary if they are a bottleneck to overall performance (which might happen if you're doing very wide batches and everything else uses super fast VRAM/HBM).
I was looking at the qwen-next-flash, and the weights would fill my OEM Spark on their own, before the n-gram. I'm unclear if offloading to disk can work here, is that what you are implying is possible?!
Nah, I’m streaming ngrams off NVMe on my Spark-alike right now. Works surprisingly well (except for when I accidentally bottlenecked it through my NAS)
The moat for OAI and anthropic seems to be very quickly shrinking. Chinese labs are now using RSI-like approaches and even without resorting to heavy distillation they're catching up in a couple of months vs. what would have been 6-12 months a year prior.
And as these models get better the pace of training is quickly speeding up too.
This doesn't bode particularly well for anthropic/OAI after they go public.
I really liked MiMo 2.5, it was really affordable and actually had vision, unlike DeepSeek. (DeepSeek has only recently added it)
Just tried 2.6 flash on a really niche topic I specialise in and it has done a really good job. They’ve definitely polluted their training data with claudeslop, but looking past the slop there is a decent model.
This is a big week. Probably getting next OpenAI and Anthro models, Grok 4.7, Mimo, etc. These open source model releases are why I can't take the "slow down" crowd seriously. I pitted older Mimo, qwen, step, gpt-oss, and other models against each other playing games like Werewolf and Sketch.io-like games where I let them talk shit while they played against each other. Mimo was by far pareto frontier of game-playing for the models that were <$0.15/m input tokens on OpenRouter. Qwen was pareto frontier in the shit talking game though. Qwen's hilarious. https://www.tiktok.com/@clankerfights/video/7642862917582425...
MiMo-V2.6-Flash-310B-A15B roughly GPT-5.6 Luna / Claude 4.9 according to benchmarks
MiMo-V2.6-Pro-1.02T-A42B roughly GPT-5.6 Sol / Opus 5 according to benchmarks
ah, would you look at that. I was wondering why mimo 2.5 became "dumber" the last weeks. I was speculating they are probably about to release a new version of the model. because the model really acted out a lot. especially the last two weeks. dont know, was just a feeling, highly speculative.
I've never used worst smartphones than anything from Xiaomi, bloated ad infested borderline malware territory fork of Android. Maybe just me but whenever I see them on HN I just can't think anything good about this company.
It's funny, I have the exact opposite reaction. This is probably misguided on my part, but Xiaomi is one of the very few major tech companies that I don't have an immediate strong negative reaction to. Everything I've bought from them, from robot vacuum to mobile phone, has been reasonably well designed, didn't break, and was priced fairly. I also think their car looks badass.
I'm sure they're doing all kinds of terrible things, like all major companies. I just can't help but like them. Also, this model looks great, and I'll give their subscription a shot next month.
I still have a xiaomi mi 11 lite, my wife has a 15t. The cameras are the best for the price. The way they chove ads down your throat at every opportunity should be illegal though
In the chart they use "Pareto Line", which I think is wrong. Pareto is 20% effort leading to 80% results. Which could be interpreted as models costing 20% having 80% of peak intelligence, but that’s not what it looks like to me.
It looks like the "Frontier Line" to me, which is also often misinterpreted. frontier does not mean the best models. It means all models that are not strictly dominated, meaning in most cases: Not same price or cheaper and more intelligent.
I personally would like the word frontier to be used with more criterias: Open Weights, per use-case, etc etc. This would make model selection easier, but I understand it’s not an easy thing to do.
There are two (or more) concepts named after the same person:
- Pareto efficiency/Pareto curves: Basically the convex hull of points along the edge of a graph, indicating the best tradeoff between the axes. This is what the post is talking about.
- Pareto principle: this is the 80/20 rule you're talking about
This is the Pareto Front [1], rather than the Pareto principle. It's the idea that anything that's more intelligent is more expensive and anything that's less expensive is less intelligent.
The realtime dashboard they shared during training (https://mimo.xiaomi.com/rl/) was an incredible learning and teaching tool for me, and they’ve been unusually comprehensive in sharing details about their methodology (check out that tech report - it's got lots of clever behind the scene tricks like Google or Deepseek writeups) and benchmark scores (even the stuff they didn’t do well on).
If you’re releasing an open model going forward, please consider offering the community more of this transparency!
Pelicans for Pro: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...
Pro [2]:, 1.02T total / 42B activated parameters
[1]: https://huggingface.co/XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL
[2]: https://huggingface.co/XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-V2.6-Pro-RL
https://huggingface.co/XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B
debatable if a turn around is possible before '29
And later they further cut Sol and Terra pricing by 20% (maybe only in the API) and Luna by 80%.
In fact Luna still outperformed DeepSeek Flash 4.1 in cost per task on Artificial Analysis when I last checked. However, Luna is slightly less intelligent.
The competition is great, and I hope Chinese models will continue to force leading US labs to offer models at a low price point.
That said, I don't think the Chinese labs have anything over OpenAI and Anthropic when it comes to capability or efficiency - I have no reason not to believe the US labs have even lower cost to serve the models.
But at least I can run Chinese models locally, and strip a lot of that censorship/refusal.
Some features of the release I like:
- Demonstration of diverse tasks, such as using a DAW
- Graphs from various benchmarks and price ranges
- Real world use of the model in scientific environments
Maybe Terminal Bench 4.0 and ExploitGym are reasonable.
Terminal Bench 4.0
ExploitGym DeepSWE v1.1[1] https://sebastianraschka.com/llm-architecture-gallery/per-la...
[2]: See DS 4.1-Flash and Qwen-3.8-Next.
It’s an NVFP4 quant, but it fits, and is surprisingly capable.
(or is it somewhere else)
It's because offpeak electricity is cheaper?
Funnily it's perfect if you are in the Pacific Time Zone because you can use it daytime 9am to 5pm
And as these models get better the pace of training is quickly speeding up too.
This doesn't bode particularly well for anthropic/OAI after they go public.
Just tried 2.6 flash on a really niche topic I specialise in and it has done a really good job. They’ve definitely polluted their training data with claudeslop, but looking past the slop there is a decent model.
so weird to acknowledge someone being on the front edge, but not name it
MiMo-V2.6-Flash-310B-A15B roughly GPT-5.6 Luna / Claude 4.9 according to benchmarks MiMo-V2.6-Pro-1.02T-A42B roughly GPT-5.6 Sol / Opus 5 according to benchmarks
Perhaps with IQ2 flash will run on 128G M5?
but now I got my "proof".
I ask because my wife has the 15T and the camera is better than my iPhone 17 Pro. And while toying around with it I didn't notice any bloat.
Plus hers support native split screen which I kinda need to multitask on the go.
I'm so pissed at how bad Siri is compared to her android phone that I'm thinking about selling the iPhone to get a Huawei Pura Ultra.
I'm sure they're doing all kinds of terrible things, like all major companies. I just can't help but like them. Also, this model looks great, and I'll give their subscription a shot next month.
Curious if Verizon / ATT still force apps on your phone, eg. NFL and Amazon apps, Fi service is subpar
It looks like the "Frontier Line" to me, which is also often misinterpreted. frontier does not mean the best models. It means all models that are not strictly dominated, meaning in most cases: Not same price or cheaper and more intelligent.
I personally would like the word frontier to be used with more criterias: Open Weights, per use-case, etc etc. This would make model selection easier, but I understand it’s not an easy thing to do.
What you call "frontier line" is also called "Pareto frontier" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_front
Your description of it is basically correct though
- Pareto efficiency/Pareto curves: Basically the convex hull of points along the edge of a graph, indicating the best tradeoff between the axes. This is what the post is talking about.
- Pareto principle: this is the 80/20 rule you're talking about
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_front