Frontier models, research and the labs building them

The Lab

Frontier models, research and the labs building them

Plain cardboard cartons shrink-wrapped on wooden pallets in warehouse racking China

Models

Z.ai ran its new model unbranded for six days

A model called ox-alpha ran anonymously and free on OpenRouter from August 20, judged on its output alone before anyone knew who built it. Z.ai claimed it as GLM-5.3-Flash on August 26 and published the weights under an MIT licence.

Chandni Melwani

Chandni Melwani

China · Aug 28, 2026

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