2026-10-01 three entries from the band's edges. (1) Upstage
Solar Mini 4 (Chosun Biz et al.): 3B-active-param MoE, on-premise
speed target — and the Solar lineup splits Pro/Mini, the Korean
vendor formalizing the tier. (2) Meta loop-scaling-laws writeup
(MSN syndication, flag): a half-size looped MoE matching larger
models on reasoning — replication pending. (3) Ai2 Olmo-core 3
(HF blog): open, scalable training infrastructure for large MoEs —
the open stack under cheaper training runs. No board changes; the
AA band ranking (GLM Flash 42 > DeepSeek Flash 39 > Luna 37) stands.
2026-09-27 (same-band head-to-heads, AA v4.3.2): (1)
GLM 5.3 Flash (max): AA index 42 — above Luna's ~37 in the
same price band ($0.15/$0.50 vs $0.10/$0.50); GLM-5.3 (full) 45.
(2) GPT-6 Luna (max) vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (reasoning, max):
intelligence 37 vs 39; the agentic columns are lopsided —
AutomationBench-AA 53% vs 69%, TB4 13% vs 27%, GDPval
1367 vs 1600, AA-Briefcase 1299 vs 1432; Luna's edges:
AA-Omniscience +1 vs −5 (hallucination), $0.07 vs $0.27
cost/task (~4×), SciCode 55 vs 52. DeepSeek: open MIT weights,
227 t/s, TTFT 1.1s vs Luna's 147.6s — Luna is a
think-long-then-batch model, awkward for interactive use.
Band ranking on AA's index: GLM Flash 42 > DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
39 > Luna 37; Luna's pitch is distribution + price-per-task,
not the index.
2026-09-26 (flagged via note.com — low-tier single source, verify
before weight): StepFun "Step 5 Preview" —
Chinese flagship claimed at 1/7th the cost, API live. If the
price claim holds against real benchmarks, it's the tier's fifth
major; until then it's a note.com claim.
2026-09-23 a fourth major enters at open weights — Xiaomi
MiMo-V2.6 Pro & Flash (X announcement, amplified by Demis
Hassabis's "Never bet against open weight models" and Perplexity's
Aravind): two omnimodal models "built in public," advanced via
scaled RL; Pro claimed on par with Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol
"across most agent benchmarks." Vendor-claimed only — no
independent runs yet; no pricing captured. Hassabis's
line is the Chaumond/Dean-Ball anti-pacing argument from a
frontier CEO. Watch: independent agent-bench runs (AA), pricing,
whether "Pro" lands in the Flash-class price band.
2026-09-21 the tier's thesis gets the megaphone — Musk amplifies
(RT, ~6:04 AM ET): GLM 5.3 Flash, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Qwen 3.8
Next Flash and even Qwen 3.8 27B "are all outperforming… every
model that was considered 'frontier intelligence' in Xmas 2025
(just 10 months ago)." Single-post claim, directionally consistent
with our Sep 6 tier record (GLM 5.3/Flash AA 60/57 vs mid-60s
frontier then). Same day: Alibaba names Dayiheng Liu head of
the Qwen LLM team (The Information, two employees).
2026-09-18 the capital layer deepens below the GLM line — a
stealth LLM startup founded in February by a Tsinghua professor
hits >$1.4B valuation after $400M across three rounds (The
Information, ~9 AM ET); syndicated piece frames China's price war
as "entering a new phase" post-DeepSeek cuts. Consistent with the
pattern: strategic/private Chinese capital flowing to model labs
even as Beijing curbs humanoid IPOs.
2026-09-13 Z.AI is now the tier's best-capitalized player — $5B
completed ($2B placement @ HK$714 + $3B zero-coupon converts due Sep
2027), >$10B cumulative since Jan, ~60% of proceeds → next-gen GLM +
a "fully self-trained" system + compute (fully utilized by Jun 30,
2028; Reuters/SCMP, Sep 13). Shanghai Star Market listing (up to
¥15B) in tutoring. The GLM line is being funded by Hong Kong's
appetite for negative-yield convertibles; watch next-gen GLM timing
and whether "fully self-trained" produces anything evaluable.
2026-09-10 two new entrants/claims in the cost-frontier space.
(1) Cognition shipped SWE-2 — "closest model yet to the frontier,"
parity with recent frontier models "at up to 70% lower cost," RL
"scaled to multiple trillions of parameters" (RT 2:35 PM ET); X
pushback from Jean Meijer: posted Terminal-Bench 2.1, omitted
Terminal-Bench 4 — "that's not a bad score, but just be honest."
Benchmark-selection audits are now standard-issue on launch day.
(2) Magic published a pretraining recipe (Sep 8) claiming DeepSeek V4
Pro base quality for ~$500K, 50× less compute — single syndicated
source, unspecified evals; verify before weight, but the claim's scale
("hundreds of thousands") is the story if it holds.
Background
The thread: the near-frontier cost war — GLM 5.3/Flash, Gemini 3.8
Flash, Meta Muse Spark 1.3, Tencent HY4, DeepSeek V4 Flash — is where
agent workloads actually run.
