Nathan Lambert: Meta's Muse Spark Open halves the US-China open-weight gap
natolambert · x · 2026-10-17
Nathan Lambert's Interconnects essay on the shift in US open-weight models:
- Meta's Muse Spark Open is now the strongest US open model by a wide margin, joined by Reflection's first model Beam. Without them, 20+ Chinese open-weight models would outclass the best Western ones.
- The US-China open-model gap has roughly halved; US open models went from irrelevant to cutting-edge users to behind-but-relevant.
- Mistral announced Mistral Large 4 (index 38) without releasing weights; Meta dropped stronger weights before Reflection and Mistral could ship theirs — cut-throat competition.
- He also questions where Kimi (K3, Jul 16) and Zhipu (GLM-5.3, Aug 18) have been since their releases.
Core theme: Meta's turnaround, what Muse Spark Open means for the ecosystem, and whether Meta can close the last stretch to Claude.
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