Skip to content

Tools & Tech

5 min left
Tools & Tech · List

Who Makes Today's Leading AI Models? The Main Labs and Their Current Models

The main AI labs and each one's current top model, read from their own pages.

Hacks Vitae artwork (AI-assisted)

Prices, versions and facts as of October 2026.

The answer

The main labs are Alibaba's Qwen, Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google DeepMind, Meta, Mistral AI, Moonshot AI, OpenAI, xAI and Z.ai.

Some keep their top models closed; others publish downloadable weights under their own licences. The newest entries are Mistral Large 4, previewed on 6 October 2026, and Meta's Muse Wonder, on 12 October. The table does not rank them.

Why it mattersModel line-ups change every few weeks, so a dated table shows who makes what before you choose.

Key facts
  1. 13 October 2026Every row read from the lab's own pages that day.
  2. 12 October 2026Meta's Muse Wonder, which it calls its most capable models.
  3. End of OctoberWhen Mistral says Large 4's weights will be released.
  4. SpaceXSIThe name on xAI's own pages now; the copyright line still reads SpaceXAI LLC.
  5. 11 December 2026OpenAI's removal date for older GPT-5 and o3 snapshots.

By Hacks Vitae Published Updated Last checked October 2026 5 min read 10 sources ↓

  1. 3 August 2026Alibaba: Qwen3.8-Max in the API
  2. 13 August 2026DeepSeek: V4-Pro general release
  3. 18 August 2026Z.ai: GLM-5.3
  4. 1–3 September 2026Claude Fable 5.1, Gemini 3.8 Flash general availability and GPT-6 Astra
  5. 21–22 September 2026Grok 4.7 in the API and Claude Opus 5.5
  6. 6 October 2026Mistral: Large 4 public preview
  7. 12 October 2026Meta: Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full
Fig. 1Recent releases in the tableGraphic: Hacks Vitae, from the dates in this article.

Start hereOpenAI's model index says that if you're not sure where to start, use GPT-6 Astra. Anthropic recommends Claude Opus 5.5 for most workloads. So who makes the models people compare, and which are open?

The table

The companies that build large language models are often called AI labs. The table lists the main ones, alphabetically, with each one’s current top model as read from the labs’ own documentation on 13 October 2026. Model line-ups change every few weeks, so treat this as a dated snapshot.

Context window is the figure each lab publishes for how many tokens a model can handle at once. Labs do not all count it the same way: for some it includes the model’s reply as well as your input.

LabCurrent top modelReleasedWeightsContext window
Alibaba (Qwen)Qwen3.8-Max; weights published as Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95BAPI: 3 August 2026Downloadable, custom licence262,144 natively, extensible to 1,010,000 (weights)
AnthropicClaude Fable 5.1; Claude Opus 5.51 September 2026; 22 September 2026Closed1M tokens
DeepSeekDeepSeek-V4-Pro; DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash13 August 2026 (V4-Pro general release); 10 September 2026Downloadable, MIT1M tokens
Google DeepMindGemini 3.1 Pro (preview); Gemini 3.8 Flash19 February 2026; 2 September 2026 (general availability)Closed1,048,576
MetaMuse Wonder; Muse Wonder Full12 October 2026Closed1M tokens
Mistral AIMistral Large 4 (public preview); Mistral Medium 3.56 October 2026; April 2026Large 4: weights promised for the end of October; Medium 3.5: downloadable, custom licence1M; 256k
Moonshot AIKimi K3July 2026Downloadable, custom licence1,048,576
OpenAIGPT-6 Astra3 September 2026Closed1,050,000
xAI (SpaceXSI)Grok 4.7API: 21 September 2026Closed500k
Z.ai (Zhipu)GLM-5.318 August 2026Downloadable, custom licence1M tokens

What the labs say about their own models

These are the labs’ own descriptions, not independent assessments.

  • Alibaba: its model card says Qwen3.8 is the first time a Qwen-Max-class model has had an open release, with 2.4 trillion parameters in total and 95 billion activated.
  • Anthropic: its documentation recommends Claude Opus 5.5 for most workloads, and Claude Fable 5.1 for demanding reasoning and long-horizon agentic work. Anthropic also launched Claude Sonnet 5.5 on 28 September and Claude Haiku 5.5 on 7 October 2026.
  • DeepSeek: its model card calls the 0813 release the official V4-Pro, replacing the preview with much stronger agent abilities.
  • Google: it calls Gemini 3.8 Flash its most intelligent Flash model, built for long-running software engineering, autonomous agents and complex enterprise workflows. Gemini 3.1 Pro is still listed as a preview, with no shutdown date announced.
  • Meta: on 12 October 2026 it introduced Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, which it calls “our most capable models to date”. Muse Wonder is available through the Meta Model API and Muse Code; Muse Wonder Full is for Muse Code subscribers. Its earlier Muse Spark line came first. At launch in April 2026 Meta said it hoped to open-source future versions. Announcing version 1.3, it listed a Muse Spark open weights release on its roadmap.
  • Mistral AI: on 6 October 2026 it launched a public preview of Mistral Large 4, which it calls its largest and most capable model to date. It says: “We will release the weights by the end of the month.” Its model page lists the licence only as “Open”. Mistral Medium 3.5, from April 2026, was “Released as open weights under a Modified MIT license.”
  • Moonshot AI: its model card calls Kimi K3 an open-weight, native multimodal agentic model and its most capable model to date.
  • OpenAI: its model index says “If you’re not sure where to start, use GPT-6 Astra”. It suggests GPT-6.1 Sol to balance intelligence and cost, and GPT-6 Luna for cost-sensitive, high-volume work. Its system card for GPT-6 Astra is dated 3 September 2026.
  • xAI: SpaceX announced on 2 February 2026 that it had acquired xAI. xAI’s own pages now use the name SpaceXSI, with no announcement on its news page; the copyright line reads SpaceXAI LLC. Its models page calls Grok 4.7 its flagship model for code and everything else.
  • Z.ai: its guide says GLM-5.3 takes text-only input, with a 1M-token context window and a maximum output of 128K tokens.

Closed or downloadable?

A closed model’s weights are not published: you use it through an app or an API. Some closed models are also sold through other companies’ cloud platforms, such as Amazon Bedrock or Microsoft Foundry.

A model with downloadable weights can be run on hardware you control, but downloadable is not the same as open-source. The licence decides what you may do with it. Several of the downloadable models above use custom licences with extra conditions for large companies. See Open-weight is not open-source for what those licences say.

Some labs publish both kinds: Meta’s Muse Glimmer model (30B parameters), for example, is released with open weights under Apache 2.0.

Models get retired

Labs publish schedules for switching old models off, and those dates matter if you build on a model:

15 June 2026Anthropic retires Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4
14 September 2026DeepSeek decides to keep V4 Pro’s API running after this date
8 October 2026Google deprecates Gemini 3.7 Flash and routes it to Gemini 3.8 Flash
11 December 2026OpenAI’s removal date for older GPT-5 and o3 snapshots
Table 1Retirement dates the labs have publishedGraphic: Hacks Vitae, from the figures in this article.

How to check what is current

Each lab keeps an official model page. The ones used for this table were:

  • OpenAI: developers.openai.com/api/docs/models
  • Anthropic: platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/overview
  • Google: ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/models
  • xAI: docs.x.ai/developers/models
  • Meta: developer.meta.com/ai/models
  • DeepSeek: api-docs.deepseek.com
  • Alibaba Qwen: huggingface.co/Qwen and docs.qwencloud.com
  • Mistral AI: docs.mistral.ai/models
  • Moonshot AI: huggingface.co/moonshotai
  • Z.ai: docs.z.ai

Our reading: the table tells you who makes what, not which model is best. Labs’ descriptions of their own models are not independent assessments, and published scores depend heavily on how models are tested. See AI benchmarks explained. The practical test is how a model does on your own tasks.

Quick answers

Which AI model is best right now?

This table does not rank models. Which is best depends on the task, the cost and how it is tested, and labs' descriptions of their own models are not independent assessments.

Is Mistral Large 4 open-weight?

Mistral calls it open-weight, but on 6 October 2026 it launched only a public preview. It says it will release the weights by the end of the month, and its model page lists the licence only as "Open".

What happened to xAI?

SpaceX announced on 2 February 2026 that it had acquired xAI. xAI's own pages now use the name SpaceXSI, and its copyright line reads SpaceXAI LLC; we found no announcement of the change on its news page.

Which leading AI models have downloadable weights?

In this table: DeepSeek-V4-Pro (MIT licence), Qwen3.8, Mistral Medium 3.5, Kimi K3 and GLM-5.3. Four of the five use custom licences, several with extra conditions for large companies. The top models from Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI and xAI are closed.

Do old AI models stop working?

Yes, on published schedules. Anthropic retired Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 on 15 June 2026, and OpenAI plans to remove older GPT-5 and o3 snapshots on 11 December 2026.

Use this

The lesson

Check a model's own page, and the date you read it, before you build on it.

  1. Open the lab's model page and note the date you read it.
  2. Check whether the weights are closed or downloadable, and read the licence.
  3. Look up the model's retirement or shutdown date before relying on it.
The rule

Is this still the lab's current model, and when will it be retired?

Quick quiz

Three questions, thirty seconds

Nothing is scored or saved. Recalling it once now is what makes it last.

1. Which Meta models were introduced on 12 October 2026?

Answer: Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full.Read it again ↑

2. What does downloadable weights mean here?

Answer: You can run it on hardware you control, under its licence.Read it again ↑

3. What does Google's deprecation page say its shutdown dates are?

Answer: The earliest possible dates.Read it again ↑

How we checked this · Last checked October 2026
  • Every row was read from the lab's own pages on 13 October 2026: model indexes, changelogs, release notes, deprecation pages and model cards.
  • Release dates are the labs' own. Where a lab gives only a month, the table gives the month.
  • Labs count context windows differently; each figure is the lab's own.
  • Mistral Large 4's weights were not yet published when we read its pages, so its licence is not yet known.
  • The page does not list every lab. It covers the main ones and shows who makes what, not which model is best.

How we check every article →

Sources

Primary written at the time, by a witness, or the original text Scholarly edited or peer-reviewed work Popular press, blogs and general websites

Related: What is a frontier AI model? · How large language models work

Keep reading

More in Tools & Tech →
Tools & Tech

Also about artificial intelligence · 7 min

How Large Language Models Work, in Plain Words
Tools & Tech

Also about artificial intelligence · 7 min

Open-Weight Is Not Open-Source: What "Open" AI Models Actually Let You Do
Tools & Tech

Also about artificial intelligence · 11 min

Why AI Makes Things Up: What "Hallucination" Means, Why It Happens and How to Catch It