iFlytek trained a 293-billion-parameter model without Nvidia chips.
Chinese speech-AI firm iFlytek launched Spark X2.5 on Monday, trained end to end on domestic hardware. The mixture-of-experts model holds 293 billion parameters but runs only 30 billion at a time. It is live on the company's cloud platform, and two small open-source versions arrived last week.
Why it mattersAmerican export controls were meant to stop exactly this kind of model from being built in China. If Chinese chips can now train large models, the price of AI tools you use may keep falling.
Read in the app — free, in 9 languages
Related stories
Hugging Face built a chatbot that reads DNA and explains mutations.2026-10-22A startup says AI did most of the work on its new coding model.
2026-10-22Mistral's new voice models listen for when you stop talking.
2026-10-21A new AI model writes its answers all at once, not word by word.
2026-10-20MiniMax revealed that the mystery model Space Bunny was its own.
2026-10-20