Kimi K3 is huge, though. Deepseek V4 Flash is a much more moderate model (284B total), and it works extremely well. Models of that size, and smaller, are just going to keep getting better and better. Presumably there's a threshold below which models are not generally useful or competitive, but if models-on-silicon can scale up to just 256B, that would be really remarkable.
My 2 cents to for your point:
- Deepseek V4 Flash is impressively capable. Sonnet still beats it out by a thin margin, but the real kicker is that a typical session with Sonnet at current API costs is ~$2. The same session with Deepseek is 2 cents (ha). Its even allowed me to consider offering free-with-limits API usage on my own app. - Taalas (or competitors) have a lot going for them. If anything I feel like they need to join hands with these smaller model makers and converge in 2028