A Chinese language model with just three billion parameters sometimes matches models a hundred times larger on math and coding tasks. The researchers behind it have developed a hypothesis about how AI capabilities are structured.
Weibo's parent company Sina has released a small language model that competes with today's top models on hard math and coding tasks. According to a technical report, VibeThinker-3B performs on par with DeepSeek V3.2 and Kimi K2.5 on competitive benchmarks like AIME26. Both of those models have 200 to 333 times more parameters.
Sina positions the model as an experiment in figuring out how much compute a model actually needs to compete at the top. Its predecessor, VibeThinker-1.5B, launched in November 2025. The new version pushes further, asking whether a small model can hit genuine top-tier performance, not just be "good for its size."
Across six math and coding benchmarks, the 3B model (orange) falls within the performance range of five current top models including Gemini 3 Pro, GLM-5, and Claude Opus 4.5. | Image: Sina Weibo
Logic scales down, factual knowledge doesn't
