Step 5 Preview flags $256.7M one-time tax gain in Duolingo's $414.1M net income unprompted
Div_pradeep · x · 2026-10-09
StepFun's new flagship Step 5 Preview impresses in a third-party finance test
Developer Damncoder ran Step 5 Preview on Duolingo's FY25 filings. Without prompting, the model flagged that $256.7M of the reported $414.1M net income was a one-time tax benefit, putting real net income closer to $157.4M.
Other highlights from the test:
- It surfaced the tension between 39% revenue growth vs. 33% bookings growth, and 2026 guidance implying roughly flat adjusted EBITDA despite higher revenue
- It caught and fixed two bugs in its own financial model before human review
- After one input change, it automatically re-ran 64 checks, all passing
The model is now on OpenRouter and available in Kilo Code, Cline, Hermes Agent, and OpenCode. StepFun claims it advances the Pareto frontier, and its platform also hosts the StepAudio 3 family (TTS/ASR/real-time voice/music generation).
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