Step Star Unveils Step 3: A Leap in AI Reasoning

Shanghai, July 29, 2025 — On the eve of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC2025), Stepwise Star announced its next-generation foundational large model, Step 3, marking a significant advancement in artificial intelligence capabilities. The model, featuring 321 billion parameters (with 38 billion activated), is designed to excel in multimodal reasoning while optimizing computational efficiency.

A New Benchmark in AI Performance

Step 3 represents Stepwise Star's first fully-sized native multimodal reasoning model. It demonstrates exceptional performance in:

• Visual perception: Accurately interpreting complex visual data like reflective menus
• Cross-domain knowledge understanding: Seamlessly processing information across different fields
• Complex reasoning: Handling tasks such as automatic cost-sharing calculations from chat records

The model has achieved state-of-the-art (SOTA) results in multiple open-source multimodal reasoning benchmarks.

Strategic Partnerships for Ecosystem Growth

To accelerate practical applications, Stepwise Star has formed two key alliances:

1. Modular Core Ecosystem Innovation Alliance: Collaborating with leading chip and platform manufacturers to enhance industry adoption
2. Strategic partnership with Shanghai State-owned Capital Investment Co.: Strengthening capital and business ecosystem collaboration

"From Step1 to Step2, our rapid iteration has taught us to focus on customers' real needs," said Jiang Daxin, Founder and CEO of Stepwise Star. "Step3 is designed as the optimal application model for the reasoning era — intelligent, cost-effective, open-source, and multimodal."

Engineering Breakthroughs in Efficiency

The company has made significant architectural innovations to improve reasoning efficiency:

• 300% improvement over DeepSeek-R1 on domestic chips
• 70% throughput increase on NVIDIA Hopper architecture chips in distributed reasoning scenarios

The "1+N" model matrix strategy positions Step3 as the core foundation supported by specialized models for speech, visual understanding, and image generation.

Open-Source Commitment and Future Outlook

The model will be officially open-sourced on July 31, contributing to the global AI community's development. This move aligns with Stepwise Star's vision of democratizing advanced AI capabilities while maintaining commercial viability.

The company's collaborations with nearly ten chip and infrastructure manufacturers aim to enhance large models' adaptability and computing efficiency across different hardware platforms.

Key Points:

🌟 Open-source milestone: Step3 will be publicly available on July 31 as a cutting-edge multimodal reasoning model 🤝 Ecosystem partnerships: New alliances formed to accelerate industry adoption of large models 📈 Performance gains: Demonstrated superior efficiency across multiple hardware platforms 🔧 Architectural innovation: Custom design enables optimal performance in diverse computing environments