Is it a coincidence that both MiniMax and Z.ai are releasing frontier open weights models right as the USG is trying to impose a cap on model capability offered to the public?
I would say yes.
You think they were sitting on a release waiting for the right marketing moment?
No, not really. This has been telegraphed for a long time by everyone involved. HN denizens have been unashamedly anti-ai for years now, so what makes sense is the not knowing part of this audience. Chinese models are also not frontier models.
No, Dario became too tiresome and annoying that someone had to do something. Personally I hope they ban Opus too. It will only provide more support for open models development. Compare Dario horror posts with this from GLM release: “ Intelligence should be open, accessible, and ready to build with, empowering every developer, everywhere.”
I think Z.ai rushed a bit for release, for example GLM 5.2 is only available under the coding plan right now and they didn't do a big write up. Not even some charts and graphs about its performance!
This is around when people were predicting a new GLM to come out, so a couple corners clipped in order to catch the moment. I'm using it right now and it seems decent, but I haven't done heavy work with it yet. The expanded context window is great.