Step 5 Preview, a 1M-context MoE from StepFun, shows up on OpenRouter (openrouter.ai)
70 points by AnneWodell 6 hours ago
lykr0n 5 hours ago
Wonder if this was the space bunny alpha model
james2doyle 5 minutes ago
Its been on ZenMux for at least 2 weeks so I doubt they are hiding
minimaxir 5 hours ago
After some quick tests, it likely isn't. Additionally, Space Bunny Alpha had hints it was a Minimax-variant model.
jstummbillig 3 hours ago
Why is that interesting?
theturtletalks 3 hours ago
Stepfun made a close to SOTA model with 3.5. They got overtaken quickly but have shown enough to be given attention when a new model releases.
It’s also an open model. Even if you only use Opus and Sol, these open models help push them and the frontier.
serf 2 hours ago
well, it's free for now , beyond that eh.
esafak 5 hours ago
It doesn't look competitive along any dimension: https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/step-5#intelligence-com...
Better luck next time.
RussianCow 3 hours ago
It's fast. The average speed is 115 tokens/sec according to OpenRouter. I haven't tested the model to see how it is in practice, but I'd certainly pay a little extra for faster inference.
Edit: Though the average latency of 1.5s isn't very low, so it might not be that fast in practice for agentic work. Also, I don't know how much thinking it does, as that's generally been the drawback to Chinese models.
celrod 3 hours ago
Using Artificial Analysis
Model | Reasoning | Intelligence Index | Artificial Analysis million output tokens for the intelligence index -|-|-|- Step 5 | ? | 44 | 160 GLM 5.3 | Max | 45 | 210 MiMo V2.6 Pro | ? | 46 | 140 Kimi K3 | Max | 44 | 160 Qwen Max 0902 | ? | 45 | 190 DeepSeek 4.1 Flash | Max | 39 | 250 GLM 5.3-flash | Max | 42 | 180 GPT-6 Astra | Low | 46 | 10
It looks reasonable by open model standards. This doesn't capture the fact that DeepSeek and Step 5 have much higher token/s than the rest, other than MiMo Ultraspeed. MiMo V2.6 is either slow but cheap, or fast but expensive. Just based on these numbers, it looks good. Astra-low is one of the fastest and cheapest because it doesn't use many tokens, but I've never tried it. I liked DeepSeek and GLM when I used them.
MisterMunchkin 3 hours ago
I like trying new models but I wish we’d get something actually new. Like a new architecture or something. LLMs are just so sloppish. We can do better.
famouswaffles 2 hours ago
Talk is cheap. You have to actually beat transformers first. All alternate architectures that have sprung up are sidegrades at best.
cyanydeez 3 hours ago
welcome to the sigmoid...
hosel 5 hours ago
Without the pelicans I don’t know what to think
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12m 0s and $0.28
>Draw a Hacker News-style comment thread. Top comment by a user named "pelican_enjoyer": "Without the pelicans I don't know what to think." Reply from "minimaxir" in a grumpy tone: "Since people keep doing it: no, you don't have to make an allusion to Simon's pelicans every time a Hacker News thread about a new LLM pops up. It's a lower-effort joke than even Reddit memes." Beside the thread, show a pelican riding a bicycle, looking smug.
minimaxir 5 hours ago
Since people keep doing it: no, you don't have to make an allusion to Simon's pelicans every time a Hacker News thread about a new LLM pops up. It's a lower-effort joke than even Reddit memes.
minimaxir 2 hours ago
Re: the edit where the OP added an image: I'm more bemused than offended.
hypfer 4 hours ago
I'd just read it as social friction, just like I'd read your comment as that very same thing.
This is the consensus mechanism doing its job, essentially.
__
Though to be fair, the way I frame it assumes no connections between nodes and independent choices, when in reality, we have groups supporting each other.
So it's not necessarily the best mechanism, as social cohesion and other such dysfunctions might be steering away from the objectively correct solution through not necessarily rational biases.
Or rather not necessarily rational when viewed in just the specific context, but possibly rational when zooming out and considering whole-subsystem health.
minimaxir 4 hours ago
behole 4 hours ago
Pelican Police. Cry more.
Razengan 3 hours ago
There was a better alternative, buried by dumb HN censorship:
The Assbench: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49807688
behole 5 hours ago
paging Simon Wilson!