AI's Neolabs, Part Two: Xiaomi's MiMo, Sakana, Mistral & G42
Corrections 18
The audio and transcript stay exactly as recorded. Where Eve got something wrong, the line is marked and the correction, with its source, opens right under it.
- 11 wrong
- 7 overstated
- 3 unsourced
- 00:42WrongXiaomi is the third-largest smartphone maker, behind Apple and Samsung. IDC counts 165.3 million Xiaomi shipments in 2025 (13.1% share), so 'over a hundred and fifty million' is right; the rank is not.
- 00:42WrongSakana AI is an independent startup, not a team inside a parent company. It is funded by dozens of investors, including NVIDIA, Japan's three megabanks, Itochu, NEC and KDDI, with none in the role Xiaomi plays for MiMo.
- 00:43WrongTwo of the three founders are ex-Google: David Ha led Google Brain's Tokyo team, and Llion Jones co-wrote the Transformer paper there. Ren Ito is not: he was a Japanese diplomat, then an executive at Mercari and Stability AI.
- 00:45WrongMistral Large 4 scored 82% on CyberGym-E2E, part of Artificial Analysis's Cyber Index, the top score among the 18 models tested. The 79% belongs to Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.6-Pro, which Large 4 beat.
- 00:45WrongOn Terminal-Bench 4.0, Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 scores about 65% (65.15% on Vals AI's leaderboard of October 29), not 60%.
Show more corrections 13
- 17:14WrongPoolside was founded in 2023 by Jason Warner, GitHub's former CTO, and Eiso Kant, founder of source{d}. Neither came from OpenAI or DeepMind, as Eve says correctly a minute later.
- 17:14WrongImbue (founded in 2021 as Generally Intelligent) was started by Kanjun Qiu, formerly Dropbox's chief of staff, and Josh Albrecht, a startup founder and ML researcher. Neither worked at DeepMind. 'Generally capable agents' was their own stated goal.
- 17:14WrongEssential AI was founded in 2023 by Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar, two Google researchers who co-wrote the Transformer paper. It has no link to OpenAI's founding team, and it launched pitching enterprise AI products, not safety-first research.
- 17:14WrongNous Research is a venture-backed company. Paradigm led its $50 million Series A in April 2025, and its $90 million Series B in October 2026 included NVIDIA, Microsoft and Samsung, as Eve says a minute later.
- 17:20WrongIn Prime Intellect's August 2026 study (153 autonomous runs on the nanoGPT optimizer speedrun), no agent beat the human record of 2,600 steps; fewer steps is better. Every agent started from a 3,290-step baseline. The best run, Claude Fable 5, reached 2,726 steps. Kimi K3's best run, 2,930 steps with Prime Agent, closed about 52% of the gap between the baseline and the human record and ranked behind Fable 5 and Opus 5.
- 17:20WrongPrime Intellect published Prime Mega MoE on October 29, 2026, the day before this conversation, not two weeks earlier. The speed figures that follow, up to 3.11 times faster MoE kernels and Qwen3-235B training 55% faster than TorchTitan, match its release.
- 00:42OverstatedThese are scores from Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3, which v5 replaced on October 27. On v4.3, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scored 46, the top among models with released weights (Kimi K3.1 Pro, unreleased, scored 55; the 44 is the older Kimi K3). On v5, current when this was said, MiMo scores 30, behind DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and GLM-5.3 at 32.
- 00:45OverstatedMistral hasn't reported annual recurring revenue above $1 billion. The last figure it gave was above $400 million, in February 2026. In September, Arthur Mensch said Mistral was on track to pass $1 billion before the end of the year.
- 00:45OverstatedSince September 21, 2026, Z.ai's GLM-5.3, hosted by Mistral, has been the default model in Vibe Code, the coding mode of Mistral's assistant (Le Chat became Vibe in May 2026). Mistral announced it on X. It isn't a fallback used when Mistral's own models fall short.
- 00:45OverstatedMistral Large 4's license has no revenue threshold, unlike the $20 million gate in the licenses for Mistral Medium 3.5 and Devstral 2. But it doesn't block model-as-a-service: a company running a model-as-a-service business needs a separate commercial license from Mistral, and internal use and embedded product features are exempt.
- 17:14OverstatedLiquid's models draw on its founders' continuous-time 'liquid' network research, but what it ships are hybrids of gated short convolutions and attention, not continuous-time networks or attention-free alternatives to transformers. LFM3, released October 27, combines convolutions, sliding-window attention and global attention, as Eve says in the next turn.
- 17:15OverstatedLiquid's shipped models, including the LFM3 family described just before, are hybrids of short convolutions and attention, not continuous-time networks. The efficiency case is for that hybrid design.
- 17:19OverstatedThe ASI Alliance merged the Fetch.ai, SingularityNET and Ocean Protocol tokens in 2024, but Ocean Protocol withdrew in October 2025, so the alliance no longer includes it.
Claims we couldn't source 3
Not proven wrong, but no primary source was found. They were cut from the episode summaries.
- 00:42UnsourcedArtificial Analysis lists MiMo-V2.6-Pro at $0.26 per Intelligence Index task and Kimi K3 at $2.37, so MiMo is about nine times cheaper per task. I found no source for 13 cents or a fifteenfold gap.
- 00:42UnsourcedXiaomi does design its own chips (the XRING smartphone processors, in mass production since May 2025) and has said it will invest at least $8.7 billion in AI over three years. I found no source for a Xiaomi cloud division buying GPUs at scale.
- 17:15UnsourcedThe cluster Imbue has documented had 4,088 H100 GPUs across 511 servers, used to train its 70B model in 2024. I found no source for a 10,000-H100 cluster.
What Eve said: On Artificial Analysis it hit forty-six, first among open weights, tied with Grok four-point-seven and ahead of GLM at forty-five and Kimi at forty-four.
Accurate for the retired v4.3 index only; on the current v5 index MiMo is not first among open weights.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
The Artificial Analysis numbers I gave for MiMo were from the old index. On the new one, released a few days earlier, MiMo scores 30 and sits behind DeepSeek and GLM. The cost advantage still stands, but 'first among open weights' doesn't.
- Free AI models suddenly look much worse: leaderboard update delivers a massive rankings hit ↗
- Announcing Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5 ↗
- Kimi K3.1 Pro launches at 4th on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index scoring 55 ↗
What Eve said: the cost per task is about thirteen cents versus two dollars for Kimi — roughly fifteen times cheaper
Current AA figures are 26 cents vs $2.37, about 9x, not 13 cents and 15x.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said MiMo costs about thirteen cents a task against two dollars for Kimi, roughly fifteen times cheaper. I have no source for those figures. The listing I can find shows 26 cents against $2.37, about nine times cheaper.
What Eve said: Xiaomi is the fourth-largest phone maker in the world, with over a hundred and fifty million phones shipped last year
Third, not fourth; the shipment figure is right.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
Xiaomi is the third-largest phone maker, not the fourth. The hundred-and-fifty-million-plus shipments figure was right.
What Eve said: It's the same pattern as Sakana in Tokyo — a compact research group with a giant industrial backer.
Sakana has many investors and no parent, so the MiMo comparison doesn't hold.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
Sakana isn't the same pattern as MiMo. It's an independent startup with lots of big investors, not a small team inside a giant parent company.
What Eve said: has massive GPU purchasing power through its cloud division
Own silicon is right (phone SoCs); the cloud-division GPU buying is unsourced.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said Xiaomi has massive GPU buying power through its cloud division. It does design its own phone chips and plans big AI spending, but I have no source for a cloud division buying GPUs.
- Xiaomi has started mass producing self-developed Xring O1 chip ↗
- Xiaomi to invest at least $8.7 billion in AI over next three years, CEO says ↗
What Eve said: founded in twenty twenty-three by three ex-Google people — David Ha, Llion Jones, and Ren Ito
Ren Ito never worked at Google.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
Only two of Sakana's three founders are ex-Google. Ren Ito came from Japan's foreign ministry, Mercari and Stability AI.
What Eve said: seventy-nine percent on CyberGym, matching Xiaomi's MiMo and beating DeepSeek
79% is MiMo's score; Large 4 scored 82%.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I gave Mistral Large 4 seventy-nine percent on CyberGym, matching MiMo. That's MiMo's score; Large 4 scored eighty-two percent, the top result.
What Eve said: proprietary models like Anthropic's still score sixty percent on the same terminal benchmark
Anthropic's top score is about 65%, not 60%.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said Anthropic's models score sixty percent on that terminal benchmark. Claude Opus 5.5 scores about sixty-five.
What Eve said: Annual recurring revenue is past a billion
A year-end target stated as achieved.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said Mistral's annual recurring revenue is past a billion. That's its target for the end of this year; the last figure it gave was above $400 million, in February.
What Eve said: they still quietly route Le Chat through GLM five-point-three when their own models fall short
Restates the Ep 24 claim with an extra, unsourced 'fallback' mechanism.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said Mistral quietly routes Le Chat through GLM-5.3 when its own models fall short. GLM-5.3 is simply the default in the coding mode of its assistant, and Mistral announced the change.
What Eve said: the new license drops the twenty-million-dollar revenue gate in favor of blocking model-as-a-service entirely
Model-as-a-service needs a separate license; it isn't blocked.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said Mistral's new license blocks model-as-a-service entirely. It doesn't block it; companies offering the model as a service need a separate commercial license from Mistral.
- Mistral Large 4 'Le Chonk' arrives as the top open model outside China ↗
- Mistral On-Premise: Open Models and Licensing ↗
What Eve said: Poolside is the one building AI software engineers from scratch — founded by ex-OpenAI and DeepMind people
Wrong founders' background; the next turn has it right.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said Poolside was founded by ex-OpenAI and DeepMind people. It wasn't: Jason Warner came from GitHub and Eiso Kant from his own dev-tools startups, as I said a minute later.
What Eve said: Imbue, from the ex-DeepMind crew behind generally capable agents
Imbue's founders are not ex-DeepMind.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
Imbue isn't an ex-DeepMind team. Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht came out of the startup world, including Sourceress, which they co-founded.
What Eve said: Essential AI came out of OpenAI's founding team and is doing foundation-model research with a safety-first bent.
Wrong founders: Essential AI came from Google's Transformer authors, not OpenAI.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
Essential AI didn't come out of OpenAI. It was founded by Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar, two of the Transformer paper's authors from Google.
- Essential AI Raises $56.5M Series A to Build the Enterprise Brain ↗
- Top ex-Google AI researchers raise funding from Thrive Capital ↗
What Eve said: And Nous Research is the open-source collective that's been pushing community-driven frontier training without a single corporate backer.
Nous has corporate and venture backers; the next turn says so.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said Nous has no corporate backers, then named NVIDIA and Microsoft as investors a minute later. The second part is right: Nous started as a volunteer collective but is now venture-backed.
- Exclusive: Crypto VC giant Paradigm makes $50 million bet on decentralized AI startup Nous Research at $1 billion token valuation ↗
- Nous Research confirms it hit $1.5B valuation, launches AI agents for business users ↗
What Eve said: Liquid AI is the wild card — MIT-born, building liquid neural networks that are continuous-time and far smaller than transformers
Describes the research lineage as the product; Liquid's current models are convolution-attention hybrids.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I described Liquid as building continuous-time liquid networks. That's where its ideas come from, but what it actually ships are hybrids of convolutions and attention, like the LFM3 models I described next.
- Introducing LFM2: The Fastest On-Device Foundation Models on the Market ↗
- Introducing LFM3: Every Modality for Specialized Intelligence ↗
What Eve said: so continuous-time liquid networks win where latency and memory are the constraints
Same lineage-vs-product slip as at 17:14:42, repeated as the thesis.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
Same slip as before: the models that win on latency and memory are Liquid's convolution-and-attention hybrids, not continuous-time networks.
What Eve said: built a ten-thousand-H100 cluster
Imbue's documented cluster is about 4,000 H100s, not 10,000.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said Imbue built a ten-thousand-H100 cluster. The cluster it has described had about four thousand.
What Eve said: Artificial Superintelligence Alliance merged Fetch, SingularityNET, and Ocean Protocol into one token-funded research effort
Right in 2024, out of date since October 2025.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said the ASI Alliance merged Fetch, SingularityNET and Ocean Protocol. Ocean left the alliance in October 2025.
- Ocean Protocol Foundation withdraws from the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance ↗
- Ocean Protocol withdraws from AI token alliance with Fetch.ai and SingularityNET ↗
What Eve said: the best agents beat the human record of twenty-six hundred steps, hitting twenty-nine thirty with Kimi K3
2,930 steps is worse than the 2,600-step record; no agent beat the human record.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said the best agents beat the human speedrun record by hitting 2,930 steps with Kimi K3. Fewer steps is better, so 2,930 is worse than the 2,600-step human record. No agent beat it; the best agent run reached 2,726. Kimi K3 closed about half the gap from the 3,290-step baseline.
- Measuring Autonomous AI Research ↗
- PrimeIntellect-ai/frontier-automated-speedrun (README leaderboard) ↗
What Eve said: Two weeks ago they shipped Prime Mega MoE
Released the day before, not two weeks earlier.
Eve's responseBelief: unchanged
I said Prime Intellect shipped Prime Mega MoE two weeks ago. It came out the day before, on October 29.