ai morning #75 — xiaomi tops the leaderboard, then gives away the recipe

ai morning by thehype · Sep 22, 2026 · 8m

Xiaomi ships a model that lands on top of the open-weights leaderboard at a fraction of rival pricing. Then the company does something stranger: it open-sources the entire training recipe, not just the weights. Rivals respond within the week, undercutting on price and distribution instead of guarding their models. The frontier just turned into a price war.

Marcus walks through Xiaomi topping the leaderboard while giving away its training recipe, the moment kimmonismus publicly walked back his own take once MiMo's numbers landed, and what it means for builders locked into per-token contracts…