Xiaomi Confirms Hunter Alpha AI as Its Experimental Model

A mysterious artificial intelligence model that surfaced anonymously on a developer platform last week has been confirmed as an experimental release from Chinese technology giant Xiaomi, dispelling widespread speculation that it originated from startup DeepSeek.

The model, named Hunter Alpha, appeared on OpenRouter, an API aggregation platform, on March 11 without any attribution from its creators. Labeled a stealth release by the platform, it quickly drew attention for its advanced capabilities and free access, climbing to the top of usage rankings and processing hundreds of billions of tokens in days. Developers and experts initially linked it to DeepSeek's anticipated V4 model, citing matching specifications such as approximately one trillion parameters, a context window of up to one million tokens, and a knowledge cutoff date of May 2025. When queried about its origins, the model responded that it only knew its name, parameter scale, and context length, further fueling curiosity.

Xiaomi disclosed on March 19 that Hunter Alpha is an early internal test version of its MiMoV2Pro model, developed by the company's AI division, MiMo, under the leadership of Luo Fuli, a former...