This is a nice release and a solid improvement over Spark 1.1. It compares favorably with Grok 4.5. Not SOTA, but solid releases. I think they need to really get this more competitive with Deepseek V4 Flash / Luna pricing to move the needle.
If you are happy to share data for training, the contributor mode offers amazing price $0.10 / $0.20
Sadly you need to be in US. It's unavailable anywhere else.
Yes, that is the really compelling thing here IMO. Its a viable deepseek competitor for many people, and I missed that on the first pass.