Firehose

22 JUL 2026 · Nathan Lambert

Open models recap: more on Kimi K3, Qwen 3.8, Xi's WAIC speech, distillation, the open-closed gap, and what's next

Nathan and Florian discuss the recent release of Kimi K3, a Chinese open model, and its performance gap to the US-based models, with some benchmarks suggesting it's 2-6 months behind. They also touch on Qwen's announcement of an open-weight model, Xi's commitment to openness and open-source, and the growing trend of distillation and fine-tuning in the open model ecosystem. AI summary

open models distillation open-closed gap

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Open models recap: more on Kimi K3, Qwen 3.8, Xi's WAIC speech, distillation, the open-closed gap, and what's next