// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
A dark horse enters China's AI race: StartLux
Something big has happened - a dark horse has emerged among China's top domestic large model developers.
A new company, with its first model having only 27B parameters, took second place overall in the CAICT MCP specialized test.
Ranked ahead of it is the killer weapon Liang Wenfeng has kept under wraps for nearly a year: DeepSeek-V4-Pro, boasting a parameter count of 1.6 trillion.
The difference between the two is a mere 1.3 percentage points.
This dark horse is the StartLux-V1.0-27B-Preview, from StartLux (formerly Yuandian Xinghui).
Looks a bit unfamiliar, doesn't it? Don't worry, its founder and CEO is an old acquaintance: Chen Danyan.
Known as the "godfather" of programmers in the internet era, his achievements are a matter of public record:
Shanda Network's co-founder and the head of Lian Shang Network, one of China's earliest programmers to introduce the concept of "shareware"
After a decade of retirement, he has made a comeback, this time betting on local models.
This has to do with Chen Dawei's recent rare public appearance.