Three open-weight AI models have shipped within the last eight months, each claiming to be the smartest free downloadable model. DeepSeek V3.2 arrived first, on 1 December 2025, undercutting frontier API pricing. Qwen3.5 followed from Alibaba on 16 February 2026 with a 397-billion-parameter design tuned for 201 languages. GLM-5.2 landed from Zhipu AI’s Z.ai on 13 June 2026 with a million-token context window and the top Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index score of any open-weight model tracked so far. All three ship under permissive licences, can be self-hosted, and cost a fraction of what Anthropic, OpenAI or Google charge per token. For Irish and EU teams, open weights allow the model to run entirely inside an EU data centre, sidestepping GDPR cross-border transfer questions associated with closed, US-hosted APIs.