I dug deep — here's everything the trail reveals about who's behind `stealth/ox-alpha`. ## What OpenRouter officially says OpenRouter's listing is explicit: **Ox Alpha is a "stealth model" — developed and operated by a third-party provider that has "chosen to remain anonymous during this preview." OpenRouter explicitly states it "is not its developer, owner, or provider"** ([openrouter.ai/stealth/ox-alpha](https://openrouter.ai/stealth/ox-alpha)). It appeared in the catalog on **Aug 20, 2026** (~21:46 UTC, first caught by ArtificialWatch's hourly sweep, listed at $0/$0 with a 1,048,576-token context) ([artificialwatch.com/wire/radar-stealth-ox-alpha](https://artificialwatch.com/wire/radar-stealth-ox-alpha)). ## The pattern: every prior "stealth" model was a Chinese lab This is the 5th anonymous release in ~6 months, and **4 of 4 previous ones were claimed by Chinese labs** ([OrcaRouter analysis](https://www.orcarouter.ai/blog/ox-alpha-stealth-model-what-we-know)): - **Pony Alpha** (Feb 2026) → **Zhipu AI GLM-5**, claimed ~5 days later ([BlockBeats](https://www.theblockbeats.info/flash/343908)) - **Hunter Alpha** (Mar 11) → **Xiaomi MiMo-V2-Pro**; **Healer Alpha** → MiMo-V2-Omni — revealed by OpenRouter itself on Mar 19 ([OpenRouter on X](https://x.com/OpenRouter/status/2034436433143124381)) - **Elephant Alpha** (Apr) → **Ant Group Lingxi Ling-2.6-flash** (~2 weeks later) - **Owl Alpha** (Apr) → **Meituan LongCat-2.0** (confirmed Jun 30) ([WMW analysis](https://watermelonwater.tech/insights/openrouter免费模型美团大模型/)) Ox Alpha is unclaimed as of Aug 21, 2026 — reveals historically came days to weeks after launch. ## The strongest fingerprint: it looks like a Zhipu GLM Comparing OpenRouter's API metadata, **Ox Alpha's configuration is nearly byte-for-byte identical to Z.ai's GLM 5.3** (launched Aug 16–18): same 1M context, same 131,072 max completion tokens, same mandatory-reasoning setup (efforts max/high/low, default "max"), same default temperature 1.0 / top_p 0.95, same supported parameter set, same tokenizer ("Other") — **except Ox Alpha adds image+video input, which GLM 5.3 lacks** ([OpenRouter models API](https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models), [endpoints API](https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models/stealth/ox-alpha/endpoints)). That lines up with community forensics from AI-sleuth account AiBattle: Ox-Alpha reportedly **uses the same tokenizer as the GLM models with the same error messages**, and notably a **Zhipu employee previously said multimodal would come in the next major release after GLM-5.3** — which is exactly what Ox Alpha's video-input addition looks like. AiBattle also found Ox-Alpha and Xiaomi's MiMo V2.5 Pro both recognize a "dirty" Chinese token (`锅内倒入植物油烧热`) that GLM-5.3 itself does not ([AiBattle on X](https://x.com/AiBattle_/status/2090579345546916135)). ## The candidates, weighed - **Zhipu AI (GLM-5.4-era)** — best fit: identical API fingerprint to GLM 5.3 + newly added multimodal, matching Zhipu's stated roadmap. Zhipu also already used a farm-animal codename before (Pony Alpha → GLM-5); Ox fits that naming style. Also note the timing: Ox appeared just 3–4 days after GLM-5.3 launched. - **Xiaomi (MiMo next-gen)** — plausible because Xiaomi pioneered the stealth play (Hunter/Healer) and Ox shares a tokenizer quirk with MiMo V2.5 Pro, but MiMo-V2.5-Pro is already public and open-sourced ([mimo.xiaomi.com](https://mimo.xiaomi.com/mimo-v2-5-pro)), and its API profile doesn't match Ox as closely as GLM's does. - **Another Chinese lab** — possible; the prior is 4-for-4 Chinese, and Ox's video input "narrows the field toward labs with serious multimodal and video work" ([OrcaRouter](https://www.orcarouter.ai/blog/ox-alpha-stealth-model-what-we-know)). ## Bottom line **Officially: unreleased/anonymous as of now — no company has claimed Ox Alpha, and OpenRouter is not its developer.** The evidence (identical API fingerprint to GLM 5.3 plus new image/video input, Zhipu's stated multimodal roadmap, and the animal-codename + Chinese-lab pattern) makes **Zhipu AI's next-generation GLM the leading theory**, with Xiaomi as the runner-up — but every source agrees it's still a guess until a company steps forward. Based on the Hunter Alpha precedent (revealed ~1 week after appearing), the identity could drop any day — watch the [OpenRouter model page](https://openrouter.ai/stealth/ox-alpha), where the reveal would be posted. One extra bit of context: this all comes days after **Stripe closed its ~$7.5B acquisition of OpenRouter** (announced Aug 17, 2026) ([NYT via search result](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/business/stripe-openrouter-ai.html) — headline only; details unverified).