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Kolibri: A Sovereign Open-Weight Model

668 points · 327 comments · bastitx

  1. amoshebb · · focus · HN ↗
    Qwen3.8 27B beats Kolibri 79.9 vs 70.8 in German in Kolibri's harness on Kolibri's benchmark.

    Also, once the Cohere takeover is complete will they still be able to use this "sovereign" claim despite being 90% owned and 100% operated out of Toronto?

    1. andy99 · · focus · HN ↗
      Yeah I think a model has to be actually good to claim sovereignty, as in competitive enough that people want to use it. Chinese and US LLMs are the only ones in these categories right now. Mistral and Cohere have the same problem, yes they are made in different countries but they are not competitive. They (France and Canada in this case) would be better off just downloading Chinese LLMs, even if they get cut off they still have the weights.

      I’m most familiar with Canada, where sovereign is usually just an excuse to overpay someone connected for an inferior product with no strategic value.

      1. jamwil · · focus · HN ↗
        We have to start somewhere. And I am not sure that you understand what the word sovereign means since it’s entirely disconnected from how “good” something is.
      2. tensor · · focus · HN ↗
        Mistral's medium is absolutely good enough to help with a ton of coding tasks. I've personally used it and found it very helpful. If hypothetically the US cut off the rest of the world from their models Mistral would be a very useful model to continue to use.

        Also, it's not like it's fixed in time, they are continually building more powerful models as well. Simply because you're in second place doesn't mean you quit the journey. Though, I'm sure the US has a huge vested interest of convincing people to "just quit and submit."

        No. Thanks.

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