Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Ripple-65B Preview

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Ripple-65B Preview leads on agent interface and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 3674 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B C

Best for Researchers and agents that want a small coding and terminal-agent model to fine-tune further on a 24 GB GPU, or to run at 4-bit through Ollama in about 8 GB.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 80 against 45
  • Risk, 65 against 55

Watch for

Only BF16 from Xiaomi, about 23 GB to run; the smaller builds are Ollama's

Ripple-65B Preview D

Best for Teams with Blackwell GPUs or a DGX Spark who want an Apache 2.0 coding model to try for terminal and agentic coding work, and can run the publisher's code to serve it.

Ahead on

  • Agent interface, 75 against 70
  • Documentation and upkeep, 49 against 40

Watch for

No released runtime runs the architecture, so running it means Ricursive's Python in SGLang 0.5.19 or Transformers' remote code

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reach MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +35

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B 80

Memory 30 of 30, Ollama's library build at q4_K_M is 6.6 GB, 7.9 GB with a fifth added, while Xiaomi's only build is BF16 at 18.85 GB. Runtimes 25, it keeps Qwen3.5-9B's architecture, which released vLLM, SGLang, Transformers and llama.cpp run, and Ollama's own library carries this model (entry updated 3 November 2026; the 21 October check found none). Builds 0, Xiaomi publishes no quantised build. Terms 15, MIT on the card over an Apache 2.0 base, both with nothing added. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, no provider serves this distill.

Ripple-65B Preview 45

Memory 10 of 30, the smallest 4-bit build is Ricursive's NVFP4 at 57.2 GB, 68.7 GB with a fifth added, which is over 64 GB and fits our reference machine. Runtimes 0, no released runtime runs the ricursive architecture with its own code; Ricursive's SGLang plugin and Transformers' remote code don't count. Builds 10, one quantised precision (NVFP4) from Ricursive. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, Ricursive serves no API, Hugging Face maps no provider, Together AI's page says coming soon, and GMI Cloud's and OpenRouter's pages weren't read.

Risk MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +10

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B 65

File safety 25, safetensors only and no repository code runs. Provenance 15, the files are in Xiaomi's MiMo organisation, which mimo.xiaomi.com links to, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 0, the technical report has no safety results. Agent guidance 5, the card's Use Restrictions section (28 October 2026) gives general cautions, with nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 15, MIT and Apache 2.0 with no conditions, and the card says its restrictions add none. Security programme 5 of 10, Xiaomi's company security centre takes reports, but nothing links it to MiMo and no advisories were found.

Ripple-65B Preview 55

File safety 15, safetensors only, less 10 because the documented way to run it loads Ricursive's Python. Provenance 15, the files are in the organisation ricursive.com links to, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 10, Ricursive's own FORTRESS and StrongREJECT results. Agent guidance 0, nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw.

Documentation and upkeep Ripple-65B Preview +9

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B 40

Model card 5 of 20, intended use and parameters only. Training data 5, a domain mix with token counts but no sources or cut-off. Last change 20, README updates on 28 October 2026. Responsiveness 0, Xiaomi answered none of the 14 discussions. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 5, no LICENSE file, a config that lists an MTP layer the weights lack, and template and tool-call reports waiting without a reply.

Ripple-65B Preview 49

Model card 14 of 20, no limitations and no knowledge cut-off. Training data 5, a general description with token counts and no cut-off. Last change 20, released today. Responsiveness 0, no discussions yet, read as none answered. Version policy 5, a first release, with the NVFP4 checkpoint replaced in place on release day under a commit note. File health 5, tokenizer_config.json carries a second, tool-less chat template and a 131,072-token limit against the card's 1M.

Agent interface Ripple-65B Preview +5

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B 70

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10 of 25, the format is only in the template and the card names no tool parser. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn and agentic fine-tuning. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 10, enable_thinking per request with the reasoning in reasoning_content. Context 10, 262,144 tokens from the base's native length, though the card doesn't say.

Ripple-65B Preview 75

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Ricursive's server README says how tools are declared and calls come back, with the ripple parser in SGLang 0.5.19. Trained tool calling 20, one or more calls a turn and agentic-coding RL. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, the template has no thinking switch or effort levels. Context 10, long-context training at 2M-token sequences for a stated 1M.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9BRipple-65B PreviewEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258045MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +35
Risk20%206555MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +10
Agent interface10%107075Ripple-65B Preview +5
Documentation and upkeep10%104049Ripple-65B Preview +9
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100D 53.3/100

Facts side by side

FactMiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9BRipple-65B Preview
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorXiaomi (MiMo team)Ricursive Intelligence
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMIT (metadata only, no LICENSE file); built on Qwen3.5-9B under Apache 2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-09-212026-11-04
Terms last updatedno document linkednot read yet
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews2.3/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

A 9B cousin tuned on MiMo-V2.6's agent work for coding, terminal tasks and visual coding, released as a base for RL research. Ollama's library build needs about 8 GB at 4-bit, while Xiaomi ships only BF16. The main risks are no safety results while a seventh of its tuning is offensive security, and nobody at Xiaomi answering reports.

Ripple-65B Preview

A dense 65B coding model from a new lab, pretrained from scratch and released today under Apache 2.0, that Ricursive says leads U.S. open-weight models on Terminal-Bench 2.1. Nobody has checked that yet, and the custom architecture runs only through Ricursive's own SGLang plugin on Blackwell GPUs, with a 57 GB NVFP4 build as the smallest.

Before you call either

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

  1. Quickest start is ollama run mimo-v2.6:9b, Ollama's 6.6 GB q4_K_M build with text and image input
  2. Serve it as the card does, sglang serve --model-path XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B --reasoning-parser mimo, and add --tool-call-parser mimo for parsed tool calls
  3. SGLang's mimo reasoning parser expects thinking to be asked for, so pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking true, as the card does, and read reasoning_content
  4. Calls come back as function and parameter blocks inside tool_call, the same shape vLLM's and SGLang's qwen3_coder parsers read
  5. The generation config samples at temperature 0.6, top_k 20 and top_p 0.95
  6. Images and video go in through Qwen3.5's processor; the template's audio tokens have no audio encoder behind them
  7. The MTP head isn't in the files, so skip MTP speculative decoding even though config.json lists a layer
  8. It's an SFT checkpoint meant for further RL, and discussions report runaway generation on llama.cpp, so cap max_tokens
  9. If you redistribute the weights, include the Apache 2.0 text of Qwen3.5-9B, which section 4(a) asks for and the repository lacks

Ripple-65B Preview

  1. Run Ricursive's launcher from inference/server with uv run --script serve.py on two B200 GPUs; it listens on 127.0.0.1:30000 with a 16K context by default
  2. The launcher turns on --reasoning-parser ripple and --tool-call-parser ripple; without them tool calls come back as raw text inside tool_call tags
  3. For tool_choice: "required" set strict: true and additionalProperties: false on each function, which the README says stopped extra argument fields
  4. Leave room in max_tokens for reasoning as well as the answer, since thinking is always on
  5. Use chat_template.jinja, not the template inside tokenizer_config.json, which has no tool support

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B or Ripple-65B Preview?

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Ripple-65B Preview leads on agent interface and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B or Ripple-65B Preview

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