Atlas / Open-weight and challenger labs
Open-weight and challenger labs
AI Market Atlas · by Pro PluribusModels you can download and run yourself, plus well-funded challengers. China now holds most of the top open-weight spots.
20 companies and products
Updated 10 Nov 2026. Select one for its offerings, news and links.
Open-weight and challenger labs
China
DeepSeekV4 and V4.1, the price-setter for open frontier models. Raised about $15B (22 Oct, led by Tencent and CATL) at ~$75B pre-money, days after US civilian agencies were ordered to remove its AI.
QwenQwen3.8 is current; Qwen 4 was previewed in four tiers (22 Sep) but not yet released. The most-used base model for fine-tuning.
KimiUpdatedKimi K3.1 Pro (open weights 5 Nov †), the largest open-weight model. Moonshot is valued at ~$50B and targets a Hong Kong IPO in Q1 2027.
GLMGLM-5.3: billed as the strongest open-weight coding model.
MiniMaxM3 open model, plus Hailuo video and consumer apps.
HunyuanUpdatedHy4 (4 Nov), the cheapest flagship-class open model, now with computer use.
LongCatTopped OpenRouter usage anonymously before it was even announced.
Doubao · SeedUpdatedChina's #1 consumer chatbot. Flagship models stay closed.
Xiaomi MiMoA phone maker now holds the top open-weight score: MiMo-V2.6-Pro leads the Artificial Analysis open-weight rankings.US and Europe
Mistral AIUpdatedEurope's sovereign-AI champion. Raised EUR 3B at EUR 21B (Sep); released Large 4, a 1T-parameter open-weight model, on 29 Oct.
Gemma 4The strongest open small-model family from a US lab.
Nemotron 3UpdatedThe largest US builder of open-weight models, with open data and training recipes.
gpt-ossOpenAI's only open-weight models, now a year old.
Thinking Machines LabUpdatedInkling open models plus Tinker, a service for fine-tuning your own model.
CohereUpdatedEnterprise and sovereign specialist. Merging with Aleph Alpha; first close of a Series E of up to C$7B at C$35.7B (29 Oct), with Canada investing.
OLMoFully open: weights, training data and code.
Reflection AIShipped its first model on 16 Oct: Beam, a 501B open-weight model. NVIDIA is reportedly in talks to acquire it.
Arcee AIUS open-weight challenger: $150M+ Series B at $1B pre-money (Sep); says it trained four open models for $20M.
PoolsideCoding-focused model lab. NVIDIA is paying $6B to license its training stack and investing $1B at a $12B valuation.
JevA new kind of model that returns typed decisions, not text. $870M Series A at $7.5B (9 Oct). OpenAI, Amazon and Cloudflare now ship rivals; Jev is still the most-queried on OpenRouter.This map is a by-product of the work. Keeping track of what each of these actually does, and which ones are worth your time, is part of how I advise founder-led companies on AI. If you want that applied to your business, the first conversation is free.
Book a 30-minute conversation →Compiled from public sources by Pro Pluribus; updated 10 Nov 2026. General information, not advice. Company names and logos belong to their owners and are used to identify them, without affiliation or endorsement. Terms