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