30-Person Startup Arcee AI Releases 400-Billion Parameter Open Source LLM Rivaling Meta's Llama 4

Jan 30, 2026
TechCrunch
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Summary

Tiny 30-person startup Arcee AI shocks the tech world by releasing Trinity, a massive 400-billion parameter open source AI model that rivals Meta's Llama 4 and China's top models, spending just $20 million over six months to challenge industry giants.

Key Points

  • 30-person startup Arcee AI releases Trinity, a 400-billion parameter open source LLM that benchmarks competitively against Meta's Llama 4 and China's GLM-4.5 models
  • The company trains all three Trinity models (400B, 26B, and 6B parameters) in six months for $20 million using 2,048 Nvidia Blackwell B300 GPUs
  • Arcee commits to permanent open source availability under Apache license, positioning itself as a U.S. alternative to Chinese models and addressing concerns about Meta potentially restricting future Llama releases

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