Alibaba's HappyHorse tops rankings
A report says Alibaba's HappyHorse-1.0 reached the top spot in a global AI-video ranking for April 2026, overtaking several well-known rivals. The ranking is not an independent benchmark, but the coverage suggests more geographic diversity in AI-video leaders. (roborhythms.com)
Alibaba’s HappyHorse-1.0 moved to No. 1 on Artificial Analysis’s text-to-video leaderboard in April 2026, ahead of models from ByteDance, Google, Runway and OpenAI. (artificialanalysis.ai) On Artificial Analysis’s global leaderboard, HappyHorse-1.0 carried an Elo score of 1,355 with 5,636 samples as of April 13, while ByteDance Seed Dreamina Seedance 2.0 720p ranked second at 1,273 and OpenAI Sora 2 Pro ranked 20th at 1,196. (artificialanalysis.ai) The model appeared on the benchmark around April 7 without a public owner, and Alibaba confirmed on April 10 that HappyHorse belongs to its ATH AI Innovation Unit and remains in internal testing with application programming interface access planned soon. (cnbc.com) Artificial Analysis does not run a lab-style benchmark with fixed prompts and fixed scoring. Its Video Arena asks users to compare two anonymous clips side by side, then turns those votes into Elo ratings, a ranking system borrowed from chess. (artificialanalysis.ai) That makes HappyHorse’s rise a measure of crowd preference on one platform, not an independent industry standard. Artificial Analysis’s own page says the leaderboard is based on crowdsourced preferences, and users can submit prompts and vote after watching the outputs. (artificialanalysis.ai) The ranking still puts a Chinese company at the top of one of the most watched AI video scoreboards at a moment when ByteDance’s Seedance, KlingAI, MiniMax, Vidu and Alibaba’s own Wan models are all clustered near the upper tier. (artificialanalysis.ai) Alibaba has been widening its artificial intelligence push beyond shopping and cloud software. In March 2026, the company said it had launched Wukong, an enterprise AI platform, after setting up the Alibaba Token Hub business group. (alibabagroup.com) CNBC reported that HappyHorse’s reveal came as rivals in AI video faced heavier competition and product setbacks, adding to investor focus on which companies can turn eye-catching demos into usable services. (cnbc.com) For now, HappyHorse is easiest to read as two separate facts at once: Alibaba has a video model that users on a major arena preferred this month, and the broader race still lacks a single neutral scoreboard everyone accepts. (artificialanalysis.ai)
