🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Thursday, August 20, 2026

Today's releases are narrow: Tencent ships two translation-specific APIs while Z.Ai iterates GLM with a Turbo variant, so builders get cheaper specialized calls rather than a new general frontier.

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
GLM-5.2 Turbo — Z.AI's faster GLM-5.2 variant, released Aug 17. Released Aug 17. → Source

━━━ SPECIALIZED 🎯
Hy-MT2 1.8B — Compact translation model covering 33 language pairs plus five Chinese dialect and minority-language pairs. Released Aug 20 · 8k context · Closed/API · $0.04/$0.18 per 1M tokens. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

Hy-MT2 30B A3B — Tencent's flagship translation model with the same 33+5 language coverage and structured workflows. Released Aug 20 · 8k context · Closed/API · $0.07/$0.29 per 1M tokens. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Friday, August 21, 2026

Open-weight multimodal and coding models are closing the gap with closed frontier while a 3B safety classifier makes moderation cheap — builders can now assemble vision, coding, and safety from open components without API lock-in.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
GLM-5.3 — Post-training-only upgrade on the 743B GLM-5.2 base claims a 50% coding jump and top open Terminal-Bench scores. 743B total params · open weights · Released Aug 14. 📦 Open weights. → Source

DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp — Experimental vision-enabled V4 Flash matches text performance and closes most of the gap to Opus-4.8 on multimodal agent tasks. 284B total / 13B active · 1M context · MIT · $0.22/$0.66 per 1M · Released Aug 21. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

Ling 3.0 Flash Base — 127.5B open-weights text-generation base model under MIT, a clean pretrained foundation for further tuning. 127.5B total params · MIT · Released Aug 11. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
Ox Alpha — Reasoning model built for coding, sustained agentic work, and production workloads with a 1M-token context. 1M context · Closed/API · Free · Released Aug 20. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Saturday, August 22, 2026

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
Ornith 1.5 35B A3B — MIT-licensed 35B-parameter text model; the A3B suffix suggests a sparse architecture but active params are unconfirmed. Released Aug 22 · 35B total params · MIT license. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Sunday, August 23, 2026

━━━ SPECIALIZED 🎯
Hy-MT2 7B — Tencent's 7B translation model covers 33 language pairs plus five Chinese dialect and minority-language pairs, with structured delimiter-based workflows for clean extraction. Released Aug 19 · 7B params · 8k context · Closed/API · $0.07/$0.29 per 1M. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Tuesday, August 25, 2026

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
Grok 4.6 — xAI's most capable model, built for coding, agentic tasks, and knowledge work. Released Aug 21. ⚡ API live. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Wednesday, August 26, 2026

Builders get a two-track week: open-weight models pushing into frontier-scale parameter counts, and specialized tools that skip the API entirely.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
Qwen3.8 Flash Next — Image-text-to-text at 180B total params, aimed at multimodal tasks without a separate vision tower. 180B params · Released Aug 26 · 📦 Open weights · HF → Source

GLM 5.3 Flash — MIT-licensed 321B text-generation model, the open-weight counterpart to the closed GLM 5.3 line. 321.3B params · MIT · Released Aug 26 · 📦 Open weights · HF → Source

━━━ SPECIALIZED 🎯
MiniMax Music3 — Open-weights music model that generates complete five-minute songs from lyrics plus a structured caption, not just short clips. Released Aug 17 · 📦 Open weights → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Thursday, August 27, 2026

Today's releases push multimodal and speech-to-text into default building blocks: a 1M-context Qwen flash for agentic UI work, an open 9B image-text model, and GA transcription from Gemini.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
Qwen3.8 Flash — Multimodal reasoning for coding, agentic workflows, visual understanding, and document/codebase analysis. Released Aug 26. Context 1.0M; $0.15/$0.47 per 1M. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

━━━ SPECIALIZED 🎯
UI-Venus 2 9B — Open 9B image-text-to-text model for UI-centric multimodal workflows. Released Aug 26. 9B params; Apache-2.0. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe — Two dedicated speech-to-text models based on Gemini audio understanding, now generally available. Released Aug 26. GA. ⚡ API live · Google AI. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Friday, August 28, 2026

Today's releases split between massive open-weight generalists (Hy4 Preview at 780B, Granite 4.2 local reasoning) and narrow specialized tools (finance, diarization, time-series), so builders can pair a local reasoning core with cheap domain-specific APIs.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
Hy4 Preview — Tencent's 780B open-weight text-generation model under Apache 2.0, a large generalist for custom deployment. 780B params · Apache 2.0 · Released Aug 27. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

━━━ SPECIALIZED 🎯
Ling 3.0 Flash Fin — Finance-focused MoE with 5.1B active params out of 124B, 262k context, free API for investment workflows. 5.1B active / 124B total · 262k context · Closed/API · FREE · Released Aug 27. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

Nemotron 3 Diarization Preview — Voice-activity-detection model for speaker diarization, a building block for audio pipelines. Released Aug 24. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

TimesFM 3.0 — Time-series forecasting model at 331M params, small enough to embed in analytics. 331M params · Released Aug 24. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

━━━ LOCAL 🏠
Granite 4.2 — Open-weight reasoning family in 3B, 8B, and 30B sizes for local and enterprise deployment under Apache 2.0. 3B/8B/30B · Apache 2.0 · Released Aug 25. 📦 Open weights. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Saturday, August 29, 2026


━━━ ALSO TRACKED

• glm-5.3-flash:batch (openrouter)


Total: 1 items tracked today

🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Sunday, August 30, 2026

Today’s only fresh release is a 30B open-weight model aimed at 20GB VRAM, continuing the local-first push.

━━━ LOCAL 🏠
Meta Muse Glimmer — 30B open-weight model sized for consumer GPUs, fitting in 20GB VRAM for local deployment. 30B params, open weights. 📦 Open weights. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Monday, August 31, 2026

Today’s split: closed frontier polish in Grok 4.1 versus open-weight specialization for Indian scripts and long-context handling — builders get cheaper local options without waiting for the next giant.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
Gnani Evon — Open-weight model with a tokenizer rebuilt for Indian scripts, targeting lower AI costs for enterprise agents. Open weights. Released Aug 29. 📦 Open weights. → Source
ContextPilot 8B — Text-generation model at 8B total params, part of a family for context handling. 8B params. Released Aug 27. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source
ContextPilot 14B — Larger 14B sibling for context-heavy tasks. 14B params. Released Aug 27. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source
ContextPilot E4B — 7.9B efficient variant, likely for lower-resource deployment. 7.9B params. Released Aug 27. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
Grok 4.1 — Lower hallucination rate and API access at competitive pricing, positioned against Gemini 3. ⚡ API live. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Tuesday, September 01, 2026

Today's releases split between a faster closed reasoning API and sparse open-weight additions, so builders get a cheap diffusion-LLM option but little new local horsepower.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
InternLumina U2 — New Apache-2.0 open-weight release from InternLM with no published parameter count or task focus yet. License Apache-2.0 · Released Sep 1. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

Granite 4.2 8B — IBM's dense reasoning model gets an 8B API variant, adding a cheaper option for math, code generation, and agentic workflows. Context 131k · $0.10/$0.15 per 1M · Released Aug 31. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
Mercury 2.5 Preview — Diffusion LLM that produces and refines multiple tokens in parallel, targeting the fastest reasoning latency. Closed/API · Context 260k · $0.04/$0.15 per 1M · Released Aug 31. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Wednesday, September 02, 2026

Today's pattern is incremental frontier upgrades for agentic coding and long-horizon work, plus one small open-weight model for local tinkering.

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
Claude Fable 5.1 — Successor to Fable 5 with the biggest gains in agentic coding, long-running workflows, and knowledge work; same price but cheaper cache reads. 1M context, closed API, $10/$50 per 1M. Released Sep 1. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

Claude Mythos 5.1 — Anthropic's companion reasoning-vision model launched alongside Fable 5.1. Closed API. Released Sep 1. ⚡ API live · Anthropic. → Source

Gemini 3.8 Flash — Google's most intelligent Flash model, with significant gains over 3.7 Flash in software engineering, agentic tasks, and multi-step reasoning. 1M context, closed API, $0.75/$3.75 per 1M. Released Sep 2. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

━━━ LOCAL 🏠
tiny-aya-l2-thinker — Cohere's 3.4B open-weight text-generation model under a non-commercial license, small enough for local experimentation. 3.4B total params, CC BY-NC 4.0. Released Sep 2. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Thursday, September 03, 2026

Today's pattern is looser access: Meta teases open weights for Muse Spark while shipping a closed API tier, Anthropic cuts Fable/Mythos prices, and open labs push small permissive multimodal and reasoning models.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
Qwen Drive 1.0 4B — Small open multimodal model for image+text tasks where a 4B footprint is enough. 4B params, Apache-2.0. Released Aug 27. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
Muse Spark 1.3 — Meta's multimodal reasoning model for long-running agentic and coding workflows; open weights teased, with a cheaper contributor tier at $0.10/$0.20 per 1M. 1M context, closed API, $1.25/$4.25 per 1M. Released Sep 2. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source
Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber — Cyber variant of the 3.8 Flash line, announced alongside the base model. Released Sep 2. → Source

━━━ SPECIALIZED 🎯
MobileVLA R1 — Mobile vision-language-action model from BAAI, CC-BY-SA-4.0. Released Sep 3. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source
Recon2Reason Reasoning 4B — 4B image-text-to-text reasoning model, Apache-2.0. 4B params, Apache-2.0. Released Sep 3. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Friday, September 04, 2026

Today’s split between fully open small models and a 438B reasoning model means builders can pick auditability or raw scale.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
K2 Horizon — Fully open release with weights, code, and training data, rare for builders who need to audit or reproduce the full stack. Released Sep 3. Open weights, code, training data. → Source

Spark X2.5 4B — A compact 4B text model under Apache 2.0, useful for lightweight generation without a closed API. Released Sep 4. 4B params, Apache 2.0. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
Quasar 438B — A 438B reasoning model aimed at complex multi-step inference, pushing parameter scale for reasoning-heavy workloads. Released Sep 4. 438B params. → Source

━━━ SPECIALIZED 🎯
GaussianMind — Audio-text-to-text in 5.6B params with Apache 2.0, targeting speech-plus-language tasks without a closed API. Released Sep 3. 5.6B params, Apache 2.0. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Saturday, September 05, 2026

Today's releases extend frontier API access to long-context multimodal work, with OpenAI's Astra line and a fresh Qwen Max snapshot both targeting builders who need 1M+ token windows and vision input.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
Qwen3.8 Max 0902 — Updated snapshot of Alibaba's 2.4T-param MoE that takes text, image, and video input and returns text, aimed at builders needing a cheaper multimodal frontier alternative. Released Sep 3 · 1.0M context · $2.00/$6.00 per 1M. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
GPT-6 Astra — OpenAI's flagship for end-to-end work: advanced analysis, software engineering, deep research, scientific work, and document creation, with a 1.1M context window. Released Sep 4 · 1.1M context · $10.00/$50.00 per 1M. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

GPT-6 Astra Pro — Same underlying Astra model served with reasoning.mode=pro for higher-quality responses on complex tasks, for builders who want a toggle rather than a separate model. Released Sep 4 · 1.1M context · $10.00/$50.00 per 1M. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Sunday, September 06, 2026

Today’s split: a 16B Apache-2.0 open-weight text model for self-hosting, while xAI pushes a managed coding/agent frontier model—builders can choose local control or closed capability.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
LLaDA 2.2 Mini — A 16.3B-param Apache-2.0 text-generation model, small enough to self-host while staying permissively licensed. Released Sep 5. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
Grok 4.6 — xAI’s most capable model, built for coding, agentic tasks, and knowledge work. ⚡ API live · Google Cloud Agent Platform. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Monday, September 07, 2026

Small open models at 2–8B scale land for edge and document retrieval while Anthropic cuts frontier coding prices — builders get cheaper agentic coding and more local search options.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
MiniCPM5 2B — Family release with four specialized 2B variants (base, Midtrain, MLX, DSpark) aimed at edge deployment. 2B params, Apache-2.0. Released Sep 6. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
Claude Sonnet 5 — Discounted frontier coding model with improved agentic coding, benchmark performance, and reduced misaligned behavior. Time-limited discounted pricing. ⚡ API live. → Source

━━━ SPECIALIZED 🎯
Tencent EVIE 4.5B & 8B — Visual document retrieval models for searching image-based documents. 4.5B and 8B params, Apache-2.0. Released Sep 4. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Tuesday, September 08, 2026

Open-weight multimodal is now arriving at frontier scale — a 124.8B vision-language model with an MIT license changes the build-vs-buy calculus for visual agents.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
Ling 3.0 Flash VL — Frontier-scale open vision-language model; the MIT license removes the usual deployment friction for commercial multimodal products. 124.8B total params · MIT license · Released Sep 4. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Wednesday, September 09, 2026

Today's pattern is specialization over scale: open weights split into math RL and UI multimodal, while diffusion LLM and ComfyUI video tooling mature for builders.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
LLaDA UI — 16.9B image-text-to-text model from InclusionAI, open weights for multimodal builders. Released Sep 6 · 16.9B params. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

Nemotron 3 Labs Ultra Math RL — NVIDIA's 560.5B math-focused RL model targets hard reasoning benchmarks without a general-purpose tax. Released Sep 2 · 560.5B params. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

━━━ CLOSED FRONTIER 🔒
Mercury 2.5 — Inception's diffusion LLM now at 260k context and $0.04/$0.15 per 1M, generating tokens in parallel. Released Sep 8 · 260k context · Closed/API. ⚡ API live · OpenRouter. → Source

━━━ SPECIALIZED 🎯
Minimax H3 — Video generation via inpainting now runs inside ComfyUI, giving builders a node-based path to H3 outputs. → Source

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🤖 ModelBytes Digest
Thursday, September 10, 2026

Open-weight releases today split between a 763B multimodal flagship and small multilingual bases, while agent frameworks mature alongside — builders can pick ceiling or floor without leaving open licenses.

━━━ OPEN FRONTIER 🔓
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — 763B-param image-text-to-text model under MIT; the open multimodal flagship builders can deploy without closed-API lock-in. Released Sep 10 · MIT · 763.2B total params. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

GigaChat 3.5 432B A28B Reasoning — 432B open reasoning model under MIT, aimed at builders who need explicit reasoning traces without proprietary APIs. Released Sep 3 · MIT · 432B total params. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

Nex N2.5 mini — 35.1B text-generation model under Apache-2.0, a mid-size open option for builders who need capability without 700B overhead. Released Sep 10 · Apache-2.0 · 35.1B total params. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

━━━ LOCAL 🏠
tiny-aya base 32K — 3.4B multilingual base model with 32K context under CC-BY-NC-4.0, a local option for long-context tasks. Released Sep 8 · CC-BY-NC-4.0 · 3.4B total params. 📦 Open weights · HF. → Source

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