If Qwen4 drops open-weight small LLMs, who becomes the local-model standard-bearer?

HistoricalCulture164 · reddit · 2026-09-25

• A Reddit thread asks: if Qwen4 completely abandons open-weight small LLMs (≤14B), who could replace Qwen as the standard-bearer for local small models?
• The knee-jerk answer is Gemma 5, but the poster wants unconventional takes.
• Key observation: Meta, Microsoft, and Mistral seem stuck — their homepages still flex benchmark wins against Qwen3 (or even 2.5) and Gemma 3 / Llama 3.2, which kills motivation to download them.
• The thread reflects community anxiety over Qwen's dominance and the lack of credible alternatives in the small open-model space.

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