Asian AI startups launch Mythos-like models

bbogdiyan about 2 hours ago 47 commentsRead Article on techcrunch.com

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Discussion (47 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

kingforaday•about 1 hour ago

They have an impressive set of investors [1]. Also, HN Headline [2] from the other day with 100+ comments.

1. https://sakana.ai/company-info/?lang=en

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48624782

fwipsy•about 1 hour ago

First impression: Third-party benchmarks or gtfo. Personally, I've never heard of either of these companies before. We're just supposed to take their word that they've matched the best models on the market?

Sakana describes their model as a "Orchestration Model." Does that mean that it's actually a bunch of different models glued together?

lifeformed•22 minutes ago

Is it actually that hard to make good models or is it just about the amount of resources you have to do training? (This is an actual question, I really don't know.) I'm sure it's not trivial but does it really take world class secret knowledge to build off of the known existing techniques? I feel like there's tons of low hanging fruit still to explore, and time and resources are the limiting factor.

fwipsy•10 minutes ago

Not hard to be a fast follower. Lots of companies are ~6-9 months behind. Reaching the actual bleeding edge is much harder.

MostlyStable•18 minutes ago

The gap between grok and Gemini to Claude and chatgpt suggests that yes it is that hard.

Ifkaluva•16 minutes ago

Their release post was on HN recently. The comments seemed to think that it was similar to OpenRouter, not an actual model.

OutOfHere•33 minutes ago

Did Anthropic give you third-party benchmarks? Is that what you said to them? Yes, they're important, but the attitude is wrong.

bloppe•26 minutes ago

Anthropic always publishes 3p benchmarks every time they announce a new model

MostlyStable•21 minutes ago

And even if they didn't, they have a track record. Even if we did have benchmarks in this case I would still wait until people got there hands on it and formed a more holistic opinion.

visha1v•about 1 hour ago

asian is bad wording. this is a japanese startup backed by khosla ventures. japan is an ally of west. the title makes it sound like a chinese company did this.

mksreddy•about 1 hour ago

The article talks about 1 Chinese and 1 Japanese model.

colordrops•about 1 hour ago

Is that really the most sailent facet of this story? Boxing it by official friend vs foe designations? Don't american academic institutions and corporate entities cooperate closely with Chinese companies as well?

WarmWash•40 minutes ago

The US and China are in a cold war right now, whether that is fully recognized or not, the fight has already begun. The US is blocking models from getting out of the country and China is blocking researchers from getting out of the country. The expectation should be only more closing off in the future.

vcryan•32 minutes ago

We are all people. This ally-of-the-west framing is propaganda. Who has harmed me more: this US or China? Who do I have more in common with: a tech worker in China or a US government official?

(I'm based in US - I use the best tech for the task).

threethirtytwo•42 minutes ago

Patriotism makes people biased. Better to not hold an identity in this area.

zkmon•36 minutes ago

I think it is time that we had a UN-sponsored standards body dedicated to bench-marking the newest models from around the world, for everyone's benefit.

lelanthran•about 1 hour ago

Feels like I need to repeat myself more than once a day now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48697258

> These companies providing tokens, whether SOTA or not, that want to IPO are so fucked as time goes on.

>Can't sell their SOTA models, only slightly better than the open source models for the models they can sell, cost 20x to 50x for good models, a TAM that consists almost solely of developers, with no customer of theirs actually boasting increased profits as a result of AI...

> I fear their time to IPO may have passed.

What on earth could Anthropic and OpenAI Pivot to now?

clusterhacks•16 minutes ago

I used to agree with you but now do not. I now think the floor for this market is probably no worse than the annual revenue of cell phone plans in the US market. So say, $250 billion.

Now, that probably doesn't justify the valuations and hype being thrown around, but I think it gets at a real revenue number.

I also don't know how that number fits into the funding rounds already raised and VC dreams of IPOs for these two.

This isn't coming from deep analysis on a verifiable source, but I started asking people in my social circle (includes white-collar and blue-collar folks) about their LLM use. The biggest surprise in 2026 for me was that almost all of these people told me about regular (and sometimes sophisticated) use.

A more intriguing observation - I work on the side with high school students and have two college kids of my own. Their LLM usage (and their peers) is much, much lower than expected . . . that's a little counterintuitive given "popular" perceptions I read.

fassssst•about 1 hour ago

> a TAM that consists almost solely of developers

That’s the wrong assumption. These models are good at office docs too.

dgellow•about 1 hour ago

But you can do office docs work with way cheaper models

airstrike•about 1 hour ago

They're passable at those. And still no moat.

AndrewKemendo•24 minutes ago

I have yet to see a model that can make a consistent and repeatable powerpoint deck that doesn’t need considerable manual revision

Find me someone who is putting raw text in and getting out a usable weekly staff meeting deck that doesn’t require massive revisions

outside1234•about 1 hour ago

Propaganda? Pay for “facts” to be placed in the model?

jdw64•38 minutes ago

Where can I get the API?

Alifatisk•37 minutes ago

Through their website.

w4yai•about 1 hour ago

Excellent. I'm very thankful the asian/chinese don't give a fuck about the US government. It feels good to have a competitor.

qsxfthnkp2322•about 2 hours ago

So now as a regular American we are behind because gatekeepers saying super intelligence is too scary

It was bound to happen soon.

microgpt•about 1 hour ago

People who are shielded by walls are always surprised when the same walls shield the people outside from them

lagrange77•about 1 hour ago

It is scary.

w4yai•about 1 hour ago

It is not. Where's the danger ? We will need to adapt, as in every technology progress, but what do you think will happen ? Realistically ? Don't feed the fearmongering. Yes, we're disrupting the status quo, if that's the danger, then welcome to the world.

Certhas•27 minutes ago

Actually the real danger is mass labor market disruption, and a massive shift of power from labour to capital.

As was highlighted in previous discussions, the industrial revolution took 80 years to start benefiting workers. The continued impact of automation at least contributed to the rise of right wing extremism and an erosion of democracy all over the west. Now we face a development that has the potential to be faster than those that came before, in the context of political systems more fragile and worse equipped to manage the change.

So yeah, disrupting the status quo can absolutely be dangerous. It has been dangerous (and deadly) in the past and in the present.

prng2021•about 1 hour ago

Are we supposed to be impressed? They distilled Anthropic’s models and pat themselves on the back for it. Pathetic.

itsdesmond•about 1 hour ago

Fuck do I care? Anthropic stole it from the rest of us in the form of training data and environmental externalities. At least this will be cheaper.

renoir•about 1 hour ago

This exactly.

YC companies literally steal competing company 1:1 and you turn blindeye.

Then a thief steals from a thief to give it out at better prices than you write low quality comment.

Shame that America will greet 250th anniversary with this kind living in it.

ce3d•about 1 hour ago

The rest of the world has been asleep whilst America has done a lot of underhand shit.

No more.

I dont think they realise how much the rest of the world dislikes Americans - Im talking known people at top positions of companies talking about how much they prefer and want to use Chinese models over American ones.

I_am_tiberius•about 1 hour ago

Zetaphor•41 minutes ago

Please use the upvote button instead of doing this.

ceejayoz•about 1 hour ago

https://www.npr.org/2025/09/05/g-s1-87367/anthropic-authors-...

Seems like a bit of karmic justice.

Alifatisk•37 minutes ago

I seriously do not comprehend how a consumer like you can have sympathy for Anthropic, as if you are part of their organisation or something. Competition is good for us. Wouldn't it have been for asian labs, we would would be fully dependent on OpenAI, Anthropic and Googles services.

TheGoddessInari•about 1 hour ago

Both of the mentioned models are model orchestrators using a vastly different multi model paradigm.

Saying they in particularare distilled from Anthropic is really [citation needed].

amarcheschi•about 1 hour ago

Anthropic just stole the internet and put it in a transformer and pat itself on the back for it - well no to be honest we have to suffer through hearing them saying that this model is really really dangerous until they got a reaction for they fear mongering

visha1v•about 1 hour ago

they mined the internet first. now they’re upset someone brought a shovel.

nullbio•about 1 hour ago

Anthropic are the pathetic ones. The pariah of the AI industry that nobody likes because all they do is lie, cheat and steal. Now no one can access ChatGPT 5.6 because of their 5 year long fearmongering regulatory capture campaign.

Hopefully they go bankrupt and someone else takes their place.

ceejayoz•10 minutes ago

> Now no one can access ChatGPT 5.6 because of their 5 year long fearmongering regulatory capture campaign.

I'm sympathetic to this arguement, but it's silly to ignore the other half; that the administration has openly feuding with them for months over limits to military capabilities.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/04/hegseth-anthropic-d...