Beyond Seedance 2.0, also open source: Meet HappyHorse 1.0

The open source dark horse tops the rankings

Date: 2026-05-23

In this era of AI changing by the day, user expectations for novelty are at an all-time high. Yet this mysterious open source model still went viral and quietly topped the charts — scoring 1333 on Artificial Analysis, the authoritative global AI video benchmark platform, surpassing the previously red-hot Seedance 2.0.

Earlier, there was much speculation about the model's origin. While foreign Twitter users were still guessing whether it was Google releasing Veo4, the mystery was quickly solved: this model comes from China, specifically from the Future Life Lab of Alibaba's Tmall Group, led by P11 Zhang Di.

In other words, the "Horse" in Happy Horse is Jack Ma's "Ma."

Multi-shot and instruction following

Having reviewed network comparisons, this model performs exceptionally well in "multi-shot generation" and "following specific instructions." However, some netizens pointed out it hasn't truly surpassed Seedance 2.0, especially in videos with large movements.

Artificial Analysis benchmark results: ranked first in text/image-to-video (without audio) category, second in text/image-to-video (with audio) category.

Open source strategy and impact

This model is open source! Think about teams that, to use Seedance 2.0 during off-peak hours, chose to work at 3 AM — this is really something.

We've always been waiting for a powerful and open source video model for free user access. This undoubtedly benefits AI animation creators even more.

Alibaba is going further down the open source path — no wonder its stock price surged nearly 8 points yesterday. Such open source spirit from Chinese developers, on the positive side, promotes "technology equality." But compared to the other side of the ocean, tech giants led by Anthropic and OpenAI are extremely closed source. Are we being too selfless?!

The emergence of Happy Horse also proves that China leads the world in video generation. Meanwhile, Sora, which sparked this wave of AI video, has long faded from the spotlight.

The key point: unlike ByteDance, Alibaba doesn't have massive high-quality video resources from TikTok and Douyin to leverage for algorithm and engineering optimization. This makes their achievement even more impressive. At the same time, since Alibaba lacks a suitable platform for commercial closure, choosing open source to attract more users is also an excellent competitive strategy — after all, Jimeng has already raised prices three times due to its T0-level effects...