The Inference Report
The lab announcements today cluster around three distinct competitive vectors: safety and control mechanisms within frontier models, infrastructure and hardware optimization for AI workloads at scale, and the shift from conversational interfaces to executable, agentic systems. OpenAI's work on instruction hierarchy and prompt injection resistance signals an internal focus on model steering and safety certification, likely in response to deployment pressures from enterprise customers who need assurance that their systems won't be manipulated by end users. Meanwhile, NVIDIA's gigawatt-scale partnership with Thinking Machines Lab and its suite of developer tools at GDC reveal a company positioning itself as the indispensable layer beneath frontier model training and deployment, moving beyond chip sales into orchestration of entire pipelines. GitHub's framing of "AI as text" being over and execution becoming the interface points to a deliberate architectural shift away from the chatbot model that defined the last eighteen months; this isn't just product marketing but a signal about where venture capital and product roadmaps are flowing. The infrastructure announcements from IBM, AMD, and NVIDIA on semiconductor optimization and data infrastructure suggest the competitive pressure on training and inference efficiency is intensifying as the cost of frontier model development becomes a material constraint. Anthropic's launch of an institute and AI21's focus on enterprise deployment friction indicate that labs are now competing on the ecosystem layer, not just model capability. What's absent is equally telling: no announcements from labs about model scaling or capability breakthroughs, which suggests either that the gains are plateauing or that the next phase of competition is happening behind closed doors, with public attention redirected toward developer tools, safety certification, and hardware partnerships that can be announced without revealing training approaches or architectural innovations.
Sloane Duvall
- As Open Models Spark AI Boom, NVIDIA Jetson Brings It to Life at the Edge
- NVIDIA Virtualizes Game Development With RTX PRO Server
- NVIDIA and ComfyUI Streamline Local AI Video Generation for Game Developers and Creators at GDC
- NVIDIA and Thinking Machines Lab Announce Long-Term Gigawatt-Scale Strategic Partnership
- AI Is a 5-Layer Cake
A curated reference of models from major AI labs, with open/closed weight status, input modalities, and context window size. American labs tend towards closed weights models and Chinese labs tend toward open weights models.
Amazon- Amazon: Nova 2 LiteTextVisionVideoFiles1M
- Amazon: Nova Premier 1.0TextVision1M
None
Anthropic- Anthropic: Claude Haiku 4.5VisionText200K
- Anthropic: Claude Opus 4VisionTextFiles200K
- Anthropic: Claude Opus 4.1VisionTextFiles200K
- Anthropic: Claude Opus 4.5FilesVisionText200K
- Anthropic: Claude Opus 4.6TextVision1M
- Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4VisionTextFiles200K
- Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.5TextVisionFiles1M
- Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6TextVision1M
None
Google DeepMind- Google: Gemini 2.5 FlashFilesVisionTextAudioVideo1M
- Google: Gemini 2.5 Flash LiteTextVisionFilesAudioVideo1M
- Google: Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite Preview 09-2025TextVisionFilesAudioVideo1M
- Google: Gemini 2.5 ProTextVisionFilesAudioVideo1M
- Google: Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview 05-06TextVisionFilesAudioVideo1M
- Google: Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview 06-05FilesVisionTextAudio1M
- Google: Gemini 3 Flash PreviewTextVisionFilesAudioVideo1M
- Google: Gemini 3 Pro PreviewTextVisionFilesAudioVideo1M
- Google: Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite PreviewTextVisionVideoFilesAudio1M
- Google: Gemini 3.1 Pro PreviewAudioFilesVisionTextVideo1M
- Google: Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Custom ToolsTextAudioVisionVideoFiles1M
- Google: Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image)VisionText33K
- Google: Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview)VisionText66K
- Google: Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image Preview)VisionText66K
- Google: Gemma 3n 4BText33K
MetaNone
- Meta: Llama 4 MaverickTextVision1M
- Meta: Llama 4 ScoutTextVision328K
- Meta: Llama Guard 4 12BVisionText164K
OpenAI- OpenAI: GPT AudioTextAudio128K
- OpenAI: GPT Audio MiniTextAudio128K
- OpenAI: GPT-4.1VisionTextFiles1M
- OpenAI: GPT-4.1 MiniVisionTextFiles1M
- OpenAI: GPT-4.1 NanoVisionTextFiles1M
- OpenAI: GPT-4o AudioAudioText128K
- OpenAI: GPT-5TextVisionFiles400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5 ChatFilesVisionText128K
- OpenAI: GPT-5 CodexTextVision400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5 ImageVisionTextFiles400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5 Image MiniFilesVisionText400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5 MiniTextVisionFiles400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5 NanoTextVisionFiles400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5 ProVisionTextFiles400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.1VisionTextFiles400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.1 ChatFilesVisionText128K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.1-CodexTextVision400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.1-Codex-MaxTextVision400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.1-Codex-MiniVisionText400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.2FilesVisionText400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.2 ChatFilesVisionText128K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.2 ProVisionTextFiles400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.2-CodexTextVision400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.3 ChatTextVisionFiles128K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.3-CodexTextVision400K
- OpenAI: GPT-5.4TextVisionFiles1M
- OpenAI: GPT-5.4 ProTextVisionFiles1M
- OpenAI: o1-proTextVisionFiles200K
- OpenAI: o3VisionTextFiles200K
- OpenAI: o3 Deep ResearchVisionTextFiles200K
- OpenAI: o3 ProTextFilesVision200K
- OpenAI: o4 MiniVisionTextFiles200K
- OpenAI: o4 Mini Deep ResearchFilesVisionText200K
- OpenAI: o4 Mini HighVisionTextFiles200K
- OpenAI: gpt-oss-120bText131K
- OpenAI: gpt-oss-20bText131K
- OpenAI: gpt-oss-safeguard-20bText131K
xAI- xAI: Grok 3Text131K
- xAI: Grok 3 BetaText131K
- xAI: Grok 3 MiniText131K
- xAI: Grok 3 Mini BetaText131K
- xAI: Grok 4VisionText256K
- xAI: Grok 4 FastTextVision2M
- xAI: Grok 4.1 FastTextVision2M
- xAI: Grok 4.20 BetaTextVision2M
- xAI: Grok 4.20 Multi-Agent BetaTextVision2M
- xAI: Grok Code Fast 1Text256K
None
Mistral AI- Mistral: Codestral 2508Text256K
- Mistral: Devstral MediumText131K
- Mistral: Mistral Large 3 2512TextVision262K
- Mistral: Mistral Medium 3TextVision131K
- Mistral: Mistral Medium 3.1TextVision131K
- Mistral: Mistral Small CreativeText33K
- Mistral: Devstral 2 2512Text262K
- Mistral: Devstral Small 1.1Text131K
- Mistral: Ministral 3 14B 2512TextVision262K
- Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512TextVision131K
- Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512TextVision262K
- Mistral: Mistral Small 3.1 24BTextVision128K
- Mistral: Mistral Small 3.2 24BVisionText131K
- Mistral: Voxtral Small 24B 2507TextAudio32K
AI21 LabsNone
- AI21: Jamba Large 1.7Text256K
Alibaba (Qwen)- Qwen: Qwen Plus 0728Text1M
- Qwen: Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)Text1M
- Qwen: Qwen3 Coder FlashText1M
- Qwen: Qwen3 Coder PlusText1M
- Qwen: Qwen3 MaxText262K
- Qwen: Qwen3 Max ThinkingText262K
- Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15TextVisionVideo1M
- Qwen: Qwen3.5-FlashTextVisionVideo1M
- Qwen: Qwen2.5 Coder 7B InstructText33K
- Qwen: Qwen2.5 VL 32B InstructTextVision128K
- Qwen: Qwen3 14BText41K
- Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22BText131K
- Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507Text262K
- Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B Thinking 2507Text262K
- Qwen: Qwen3 30B A3BText41K
- Qwen: Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507Text262K
- Qwen: Qwen3 30B A3B Thinking 2507Text33K
- Qwen: Qwen3 32BText41K
- Qwen: Qwen3 8BText41K
- Qwen: Qwen3 Coder 30B A3B InstructText160K
- Qwen: Qwen3 Coder 480B A35BText262K
- Qwen: Qwen3 Coder NextText262K
- Qwen: Qwen3 Next 80B A3B InstructText131K
- Qwen: Qwen3 Next 80B A3B ThinkingText131K
- Qwen: Qwen3 VL 235B A22B InstructTextVision262K
- Qwen: Qwen3 VL 235B A22B ThinkingTextVision131K
- Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B InstructTextVision131K
- Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B ThinkingTextVision131K
- Qwen: Qwen3 VL 32B InstructTextVision131K
- Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B InstructVisionText131K
- Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B ThinkingVisionText131K
- Qwen: Qwen3.5 397B A17BTextVisionVideo262K
- Qwen: Qwen3.5-122B-A10BTextVisionVideo262K
- Qwen: Qwen3.5-27BTextVisionVideo262K
- Qwen: Qwen3.5-35B-A3BTextVisionVideo262K
- Qwen: Qwen3.5-9BTextVisionVideo256K
ByteDance- Seed: Seed 1.6VisionTextVideo262K
- Seed: Seed 1.6 FlashVisionTextVideo262K
- Seed: Seed-2.0-LiteTextVisionVideo262K
- Seed: Seed-2.0-MiniTextVisionVideo262K
None
DeepSeekNone
- DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 0324Text164K
- DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.1Text33K
- DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.1 TerminusText164K
- DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2Text164K
- DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 ExpText164K
- DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 SpecialeText164K
- DeepSeek: R1 0528Text164K
MiniMax- MiniMax: MiniMax M1Text1M
- MiniMax: MiniMax M2-herText66K
- MiniMax: MiniMax M2Text197K
- MiniMax: MiniMax M2.1Text197K
- MiniMax: MiniMax M2.5Text197K