The Nex N2 model they merged is based on Qwen 3.5, so you can swap pieces of one into the other. They found a combination of the two that did well on some benchmarks and shipped it.

In the early days of Llama there were a lot of experiments like this. There were even some interesting combinations of models where they stacked layers of different models together or even added more layers with interesting results.

But announcing that you spliced two models together isn't very impressive in 2026, so they announced that they had done their own post training and outdid the big labs. They thought nobody would look close enough to notice.

Out of curiosity, how was it discovered? You would have to look for it to find this linear combination.

Lying about model capability is right now the lingua franca of the cloud AI business model, almost; they yes-and each other's lies because they are in a position of needing to generate interest, including going as far as needing to trigger regulatory capture.

(It's not news to anyone who has worked in sales-led businesses that salespeople are prone to believing the claims of other salespeople, I guess).

They’re using public money to “train” this.

That's attribution to Qwen team.

There (is/was) no attribution to Nex team (they've released a model based on Qwen 3.5 397B as well).

As per OP link Nex claims that what Rio team released (so far) is just linear interpolation of weights between Nex and OG Qwen model. With no attribution to Nex and zero signs of Rio doing any training of their own.

Are you talking about the credit that was just updated an hour ago? lol

This is contrary to the mayor's words on Twitter.

> An open AI model trained in Rio with public funding over the last year by @Prefeitura_Rio surpassing all other models.

https://x.com/CavaliereRio/status/2065984620626129026

Companies that generate loads of corporation tax, income tax, and VAT revenue are the exact opposite of wastes of public money.

Great, now we're defending embezzlement and fraud with public funds on HN, because we really really hate big business.

A child caught doing something bad will cry "but my friends also did it!", is that the level of reasoning hackers want to be at?

It isn't. The entirety of the comment I responded to is "Oh no, someone is profiting off of their work without proper attribution!?!?" It's a valid point, but references someone using content created by others for profit. I'm objecting to equating this project with the work done by the original content creators. They're not remotely the same thing.

I understand how the internet works and how people respond to others in this type of setting, but the comment I replied to did not in any way make the point I was making about the disproportionate nature of relative contributions.