Xiuyu Li(@sheriyuo):Apodex open-sourced a Smol SFT series (0.8B, 2B, 4B) alongside its 35B-A3B mini. Their reported evaluation shows the 4B SFT outperforming open 30B-class models on both BrowseComp and BrowseComp-ZH. This kind of result keeps pointing to the same pattern in deep research: model size is not always the main constraint. What remains to be tested is whether the same gap persists on longer-horizon research tasks, where retrieval, planning, and evidence aggregation matter more.

Xiuyu Li

@sheriyuo

Researcher @StepFun_ai | Working on long-horizon tasks | Prev @RUC1937 | Opinions are my own

Joined February 2026

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Xiuyu Li@sheriyuo

2026.06.24 01:06

Apodex open-sourced a Smol SFT series (0.8B, 2B, 4B) alongside its 35B-A3B mini. Their reported evaluation shows the 4B SFT outperforming open 30B-class models on both BrowseComp and BrowseComp-ZH. This kind of result keeps pointing to the same pattern in deep research: model size is not always the main constraint. What remains to be tested is whether the same gap persists on longer-horizon research tasks, where retrieval, planning, and evidence aggregation matter more.