---
title: "AI Model Releases in 2026: Which Labs Ship Most"
date: 2026-09-27
url: https://modevc.com/charts/ai-model-releases-2026/
keywords: ["ai model releases 2026", "new ai models", "ai model release timeline"]
publisher: Mode VC
---

# AI Model Releases in 2026: Which Labs Ship Most

50 named AI models launched in 12 weeks, about one every 1.7 days. 14 labs shipped them; none of them can count on a quiet month.

## Chart: 14 labs launched 50 named AI models from 6 Jul 2026 to 27 Sept 2026. Alibaba's Qwen team led with 7; Chinese labs made 19.

Named model launches per lab, 6 Jul 2026 – 27 Sept 2026. One bar per lab, longest first. Emerald = labs based in China.

| Lab | Launches |
|---|---|
| Alibaba (Qwen) | 7 |
| Google | 6 |
| Meta | 6 |
| OpenAI | 6 |
| xAI | 5 |
| Anthropic | 3 |
| ByteDance | 3 |
| NVIDIA | 3 |
| Tencent | 3 |
| DeepSeek | 2 |
| Moonshot (Kimi) | 2 |
| Z.ai | 2 |
| Black Forest Labs | 1 |
| Runway | 1 |

Note: Counts follow our launch feed row by row. A post that names several variants counts once (4 rows, such as "GPT-6 Sol / GPT-6 Luna"); sibling models listed separately, such as Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Flash-Lite TTS, count separately. Rows from 6 Jul 2026 to 22 Sep come from launch trackers and are a floor; the 6 rows from 23 Sep come from a sweep of lab posts. Some dates differ by one to three days between trackers and lab posts.

## The signal

- **Launches:** [Grok 4.7](https://x.ai/news/grok-4-7) (21 Sept 2026) shipped at $2/$6 per million tokens, the same list price as Grok 4.6, xAI's launch number 5 since July.
- **Launches:** Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash (20 Sept 2026, per launch trackers) is Alibaba's launch number 6 since July, one of 2 Qwen models listed that day.
- **Arena:** The 25 Sept 2026 Arena text board ranks 409 models from 53 organisations.

## The Mode read

xAI shipped Grok 4.7 on 21 Sept 2026 and Alibaba listed 2 new Qwen models the day before. Each was one more row in a busy feed. How many models do the labs now release, and who releases the most?

Our launch feed counts **50** named models from **14** labs in 83 days, one every 1.7 days. Alibaba's Qwen team is the busiest, with **7**, one every 12 days or so. Google, Meta and OpenAI follow with 6 each. The top five labs made 30 of the 50. Labs based in China, 6 of them, made **19**.

When a capable new model lands every couple of days, mostly from the US and China and from 14 labs, no single release is scarce. The supply side looks like a commodity market with many sellers. None of these labs sells into most industries, languages or regions directly; they sell an API and wait. The value sits with whoever turns this steady flood into one product for a market the labs cannot reach on their own.

> 14 labs supply the models. None of them owns your customer.

**What we would back:** Founders who turn the steady stream of US and Chinese models into one product for a market the labs will not sell into directly: a regulated industry, a language, a region.

## Sources

- [Official launch posts, 23 Sep onward (launch feed)](https://x.ai/news/grok-4-7)
- [Launch trackers for earlier rows (llmgateway, thursdai)](https://thursdai.news)
- [Arena leaderboard dataset (lmarena-ai, CC BY 4.0)](https://huggingface.co/datasets/lmarena-ai/leaderboard-dataset)