StepFun's new model matches one nearly five times its size.
Chinese lab StepFun put Step 5 Preview online on 18 September with no launch announcement. Step 5 is a quarter the size of Moonshot's Kimi K3, yet ties it on one intelligence index. Running it costs about a fifth of what Kimi K3 charges for the same output.
Why it mattersSize has stopped being the price of frontier quality, and the bill for using one dropped with it. Cheaper strong models are what make AI features inside your everyday apps affordable.
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