Xiaomi Secretly Launched AI Model 'Hunter Alpha,' Gained 1T Tokens Before Revealing Identity
On March 11, Xiaomi quietly uploaded a trillion-parameter AI model to OpenRouter under the anonymous name 'Hunter Alpha,' with no branding or press release — only benchmark data and a $0.30 per million token price. Within days, the model topped the platform's usage charts, processing 500 billion tokens weekly, with many developers mistaking it for a stealth DeepSeek release. On March 18, Xiaomi confirmed the model was an early test build of MiMo-V2-Pro, led by former DeepSeek team member Luo Fuli, who described the strategy as a 'quiet ambush.' By the time the reveal came, the model had accumulated over one trillion tokens of real production usage, and the disclosure accelerated rather than hindered adoption. The episode highlights a broader shift: Chinese-origin models now account for roughly 45% of OpenRouter traffic, up from under 2% a year ago, driven largely by competitive price-performance ratios in high-volume developer workloads.
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