Meituan Launches Longcat Flash AI Model, Rivals Deepseek V3 and Gemini 2.5 Flash
- tech360.tv
- Sep 3, 2025
- 2 min read
Meituan, a Chinese food delivery company, has released its Longcat Flash AI model. This new model is comparable to DeepSeek V3 and Gemini 2.5 Flash.
Longcat Flash is a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model. It features 560 billion total parameters, with 18 billion to 31 billion activated parameters.
The model is open-source, with its weights and source code released under the MIT license.
Meituan describes Longcat Flash as a powerful, efficient language model. It utilises an innovative Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture.
The model employs a dynamic computation mechanism. This activates approximately 18.6 billion to 31.3 billion parameters, averaging around 27 billion, based on contextual demands.
This mechanism aims to optimise both computational efficiency and performance. A shortcut-connected architecture is used to enhance training and inference efficiency.
This architecture expands the computation-communication overlap window. It achieves over 100 tokens per second for cost-effective inference.
Comprehensive training and scaling strategies ensure stable, efficient training. Tailored data strategies further enhance model performance.
Meituan has also released Longcat-Flash-Chat. This non-thinking foundation model offers competitive performance among leading models, with particular strengths in agentic tasks.
On benchmarks, Longcat Flash appears comparable to other top non-thinking models and versions. These include Deepseek V3.1, Qwen3, Kimi K2, GPT 4.1, Claude Sonnet, and Gemini 2.5 Flash.
The model's origin is notable as it does not come from an AI-first company. Meituan, established in 2010, initially operated as a group discount website.
The company is now primarily known for its food delivery services. It operates a super-app that provides a wide array of local consumer offerings.
These services include food delivery, on-demand services, in-store dining, and hotel and travel bookings. New initiatives feature community e-commerce, grocery delivery, ride-sharing, bike-sharing, and micro-lending.
Meituan is one of China’s largest platforms. It serves over 770 million annual transacting users and millions of merchants. The company aims for people to "eat better and live better."
Meituan, a food delivery company, has developed an AI model. This development indicates the depth of China’s AI ecosystem.
China’s AI capabilities first became widely known with the release of Deepseek. Since then, numerous capable AI model companies have emerged, each developing their own models.
Chinese technology companies such as Alibaba and Meituan are developing AI models. These models operate outside their primary business areas.
These open-source models are generating significant interest within the developer community.
In comparison, there are hardly any American, European, or Indian non-AI companies that are releasing models at such a rate. China is pulling ahead of the rest of the world in open-source AI, and the lead might already be too big for anyone to catch up in the foreseeable future.
Meituan, a Chinese food delivery company, released the Longcat Flash AI model.
Longcat Flash is a 560 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model, with 18 billion to 31 billion activated parameters.
The model is open-source, with its weights and source code released under the MIT license.
Source: OfficeChai
