Xiaomi has officially claimed the top spot in the rapidly evolving Chinese AI market. According to the July 2026 BenchLM rankings, Xiaomi’s proprietary MiMo-V2.5-Pro leads the pack with a top score of 70.2 on the BenchAlign v5 benchmark.
However, the competition is razor-thin. MiniMax's open-weight model, MiniMax M3, secured second place with a score of 69.8—making it the highest-ranked open-weight Chinese model available. Z.AI’s GLM-5.1 followed closely in third at 67.8.
These results spotlight a major shift in the industry: open-weight models are now highly competitive with proprietary alternatives. This makes self-hosting a realistic option for developers looking to avoid closed APIs. While Xiaomi holds the overall lead, experts caution that because of narrow score margins, choosing the right model should depend on specific tasks like coding or reasoning rather than point gaps alone.
Source: benchlm.ai