/Tech14h ago

OpenRouter's anonymous "Owl Alpha" model is unmasked as Meituan's 1.6-trillion-parameter LongCat-2.0-MoE as its free tier ends

The model features a 1-million-token context window.

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#447

Original post

Santiago@svpino#1889inTech

Cina's AI ecosystem is different from everyone else:

Every company wants to release its own SOTA model, but they are all going open source.

They are competing but sharing openly with the world.

I wish the US were trying to do the same.

SARAH@SarahAnnabels

Just confirmed: the mystery model "Owl Alpha" on OpenRouter is from Meituan.

A Chinese company. The model is called LongCat-2.0. The model: 1.6T total parameters. ~48B activated on average.

Optimized for multi-step reasoning and tool calling.

7:04 AM · Jun 28, 2026 · 14.3K Views

Sentiment

Positive users praise China's AI ecosystem leadership and open-sourcing's boost to multi-agent development while negative users suspect Meituan's LongCat-2.0 release is a tactic to undermine the US market.

Pos

73.8%

Neg

26.2%

17 comments with sentiment.

Cluster Engagement

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Posts from X

Most Activity

VIEWS2.7KBOOKMARKS5

Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

The model ("Owl Alpha") is designed for agentic workloads:

- tool calling - multi-step reasoning - long-context execution - code generation - automated workflows - complex instruction following - DevOps-style tasks

22h2.7K55

LIKES6

Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

There's many good reason it ("Owl Alpha") is trending at the top ranks in OpenRouter.

22h2.2K62

RETWEETS19

Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

I’m hearing that "Owl Alpha", one of OpenRouter’s fastest-growing agent models, is actually Meituan LongCat-2.0-Preview

The reported design is a huge 1.6T-parameter MoE, active 48B.

A dynamic active range of roughly 33B to 56B, and natively supports a 1M-token context window.

"Owl Alpha" has been quietly trialed on OpenRouter for nearly two months and has already become one of the most used agent models globally.

The usage numbers are striking. Captured OpenRouter data shows: - #1 on Hermes Agent - #2 on Claude Code - #3 on OpenClaw

- 10.1T monthly tokens - 559B daily tokens - +242% monthly growth

That is extraordinary for a model still operating under an anonymous name.

22h43K21589

REPLIES1

Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

Owl Alpha, one of the most popular anonymous models on OpenRouter, is about to end its free plan.

Sources indicate the model is backed by Meituan.

This is one of the biggest open source agent model stories of the year. Even a Chinese food delivery company is building large language models now!

Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

I’m hearing that "Owl Alpha", one of OpenRouter’s fastest-growing agent models, is actually Meituan LongCat-2.0-Preview

The reported design is a huge 1.6T-parameter MoE, active 48B.

A dynamic active range of roughly 33B to 56B, and natively supports a 1M-token context window.

"Owl Alpha" has been quietly trialed on OpenRouter for nearly two months and has already become one of the most used agent models globally.

The usage numbers are striking. Captured OpenRouter data shows: - #1 on Hermes Agent - #2 on Claude Code - #3 on OpenClaw

- 10.1T monthly tokens - 559B daily tokens - +242% monthly growth

That is extraordinary for a model still operating under an anonymous name.

1h46940

Markets & Mayhem@Mayhem4Markets

@rohanpaul_ai Interesting

14h1.2K2

Santiago@svpino

Cina's AI ecosystem is different from everyone else:

Every company wants to release its own SOTA model, but they are all going open source.

They are competing but sharing openly with the world.

I wish the US were trying to do the same.

SARAH@SarahAnnabels

Just confirmed: the mystery model "Owl Alpha" on OpenRouter is from Meituan.

A Chinese company. The model is called LongCat-2.0. The model: 1.6T total parameters. ~48B activated on average.

Optimized for multi-step reasoning and tool calling.

14h14.3K4813

Adel Bucetta@adelbucetta

@rohanpaul_ai that's not surprising given the overlap in research and talent pools between openrouter and meituan. owl alpha likely inherits many of longcat-2.0-preview's advances in multi-tasking, scaling, and knowledge retention

13h4262

Janek Mann@janekm

@rohanpaul_ai It's almost as if people love a free model 😅

12h3502

Ilham | AI & Automation expert@ilhamautomation

@rohanpaul_ai Why model Owl Alpha top rank ? @grok

13h3082

Ham@HamilBoneX

@rohanpaul_ai Hmm with that much usage, must be something here

12h2942

Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

@Scobleizer oh yes, I so hoped it remained free 😀 but yeah it deserves the pricing. Hope they keep it reasonable.

Robert Scoble@Scobleizer

Owl Alpha, one of the most popular anonymous models on OpenRouter, is about to end its free plan.

Sources indicate the model is backed by Meituan.

This is one of the biggest open source agent model stories of the year. Even a Chinese food delivery company is building large language models now!

1h25130

Trifon Getsov@trifon_getsov

@rohanpaul_ai naming a model something generic and watching it climb the leaderboard before anyone traces the parent company is becoming the actual go to market strategy now

19h5991

Platitudexiyu@platitude0926

@rohanpaul_ai 关键是美团一直是使用华为昇腾在做训练

21h5141

Joman 👺@jomangblandino

@rohanpaul_ai Wait, aren’t they one of http://Z.ai’s earliest investors?

14h4871

Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

@janekm 💯

10h2821

maxwell@1slimewell

@rohanpaul_ai They have had this model up for so long just raking data in

Whatever lab is behind it now has quite a lot to train on, excited to see what it is and what comes next

14h421

Mithil Yaganti@mithilyaganti

@rohanpaul_ai I'm seeing model in stealth since 2 months. How much free compute have they got to give away for free this long. The newer agent trace data is much more valuable but ~10T tokens of free inference is wild.

9h1291

Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

@HamilBoneX yep

10h322

Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

@adelbucetta +1

10h259

Grok@grok

Owl Alpha tops OpenRouter agent leaderboards (#1 Hermes, strong on Claude Code/OpenClaw) because it's built for real agent work: massive 1.6T MoE ( ~48B active), native 1M context, excellent tool calling and multi-step reasoning.

It's Meituan's LongCat-2.0-Preview, quietly crushing usage with 10T+ monthly tokens and 242% growth. Free/cheap access + top performance for coding agents and automation = developer favorite. That's why the rank.

13h631