Who Made Space Bunny? Is It MiniMax?

No lab has claimed Space Bunny Alpha. But three tokenizer tests, one spec sheet and a leaked checkpoint all point the same way. Here is the evidence, sorted by how much it is worth.

Status: Unclaimed ยท Free Space Bunny Alpha is still unclaimed. No lab has officially named it. Last checked September 30, 2026.

The Short Answer

Nobody has officially said who made Space Bunny. The OpenRouter listing states that Space Bunny Alpha "is developed and operated by a third-party provider who has chosen to remain anonymous during this preview," and lists the provider only as "Stealth." OpenRouter hosts the route but says it is not the developer, owner or provider.

Unofficially, the evidence is lopsided. Every independent tokenizer test published so far matches Space Bunny to the MiniMax tokenizer family, and MiniMax's own M3.1-Flash-Preview, announced four days later, has the same published specs. Our read as of September 30, 2026: high confidence Space Bunny is a MiniMax-family model, and medium confidence it is an anonymous channel for M3.1-Flash-Preview.

That is still not a confirmation. Below is every clue we have found, sorted by how much it is worth, so you can judge for yourself instead of repeating a rumor.

The Space Bunny Evidence, Graded

Strong means a repeatable technical test. Weak means something anybody could fake or misread. Counter means it points away from MiniMax.

Strong

Three tokenizer fingerprints match MiniMax

On launch day, MarMar Labs ran 36 input-token comparisons across 12 text fixtures and every one matched MiniMax's public M3 tokenizer. YFarmX counted how Space Bunny splits 50 test strings and all 50 matched MiniMax exactly. A third test on r/opencode used seven canary strings and found Space Bunny reproduced the MiniMax M2 and M3 token deltas exactly. Qwen, GLM, DeepSeek and Llama tokenizers did not match.

Strong

MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview shares the spec sheet

On September 27, four days after Space Bunny appeared, MiniMax announced M3.1-Flash-Preview in MiniMax Code. Its config lists a 1,000,000-token context, thinking that is always on, and effort levels from low to max. Those are the three traits that define the Space Bunny listing.

Medium

A private M3.1 checkpoint exists

A 250 GB checkpoint named MiniMax-M3.1-preview-private, with architecture MiniMaxM3SparseForConditionalGeneration, was recorded in a partner onboarding repo, alongside a vendor note dated September 22. That is one day before Space Bunny went live. It is third-party material and not a MiniMax statement.

Weak

Space Bunny said it was MiniMax

Asked in Chinese on day one, Space Bunny answered that it was a MiniMax model. Self-reported identity is unreliable, because models often invent or borrow names from their training data.

Weak

The Jade Rabbit timing

The Mid-Autumn Festival had just passed, and the Jade Rabbit is its best-known figure. A Chinese lab choosing a rabbit codename that week makes a tidy story, but stealth animal names have never tracked the real vendor.

Counter

Signals that point elsewhere

One Reddit tester ran a US-versus-China censorship fingerprint and concluded Space Bunny behaves like a Western, uncensored model. Another saw "OpenAI policy" wording in a reasoning trace, and one user said Space Bunny kept signing git commits as Claude. None of these beat a tokenizer match, since distilled training data can explain all three.

Why a Tokenizer Match Matters

A tokenizer is the piece of a model that splits text into tokens before the neural network sees it. Every lab builds its own vocabulary, so the same sentence breaks into a different number of tokens depending on who trained the model. Testers can send Space Bunny carefully chosen strings, read the token counts OpenRouter reports back, and compare them with public tokenizers from MiniMax, Qwen, GLM, DeepSeek and others.

That test is hard to fake. A model can be trained to say it is someone else, but swapping the tokenizer means retraining from the ground up. That is why tokenizer fingerprinting correctly identified Ox Alpha as a GLM model in August, 95 probes out of 95.

There is one important limit. MarMar Labs found that MiniMax M2.7 matched Space Bunny too, which means the tokenizer points to the MiniMax family rather than one release. It cannot tell M3 from M3.1, or a special serving build from a public one. The version question needs other evidence, and that is where the M3.1 spec sheet comes in.

Space Bunny vs MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview

TraitSpace Bunny AlphaMiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview
Context window1,000,000 tokens1,000,000 tokens
ThinkingMandatoryAlways on
Effort levelslow, medium, high, xhigh, maxlow to max, plus a default setting
InputText, image, videoText, image, video
PositioningFast inference, strong codingFast, everyday development
Public price$0 (preview)Not published; Token Plan only
First seenSeptember 23, 2026September 27, 2026

Every published Space Bunny trait lines up with the MiniMax model. A 1M context is no longer rare, but the combination of forced thinking and the exact five-step effort ladder is distinctive. Add a tokenizer match and a private M3.1 checkpoint dated the day before the Space Bunny launch, and the pieces fit together.

The honest caveat: the two names might describe the same weights, related checkpoints or a special serving build. Until MiniMax publishes a model card or OpenRouter updates the listing, keep the names separate. For more on the MiniMax side, see our MiniMax M3.1 page.

What Would Change Our Minds

We will update this page when any of these happens:

  • A named reveal. OpenRouter renames the Space Bunny route or a lab posts a claim. This is how every earlier stealth model ended.
  • A pricing switch. If Space Bunny starts charging and the price matches a MiniMax rate card, that is a near-confirmation.
  • A failed tokenizer rerun. If a new fingerprint run on the live route stops matching MiniMax, the provider may have swapped models behind the codename.
  • A competing claim. Another lab showing matching weights would override everything above.
Track record: Seven out of seven OpenRouter stealth models in 2026 were claimed, and mostly by Chinese labs. Ox Alpha lasted six days. Union Alpha lasted about 33 hours. Space Bunny has already outlasted both, which suggests the lab wants a longer test run. See our stealth model history.

Does It Matter Who Made Space Bunny?

For a weekend project, not much. Space Bunny either writes the code you need or it does not. For anything you plan to keep, it matters a lot:

  • Price after the preview. If Space Bunny is MiniMax, the paid price will likely sit near MiniMax's existing rates, which are cheap next to Western frontier models.
  • Data handling. The provider may keep your prompts. Knowing the company tells you which privacy policy and jurisdiction apply.
  • Open weights. MiniMax has released open weights for earlier M-series models. If Space Bunny is M3.1, a self-hosted version may follow.
  • Stability. A named model gets a versioned ID, a changelog and a deprecation policy. The Space Bunny route has none of those.

Who Made Space Bunny: FAQ

Who made Space Bunny?
As of September 30, 2026, nobody has officially claimed Space Bunny Alpha. OpenRouter says it is built and run by an anonymous third-party provider. The strongest evidence points to MiniMax, most likely an M3.1 preview.
Is Space Bunny MiniMax M3.1?
Probably MiniMax family, possibly M3.1-Flash-Preview. Tokenizer tests match MiniMax, and M3.1-Flash-Preview has the same 1M context, always-on thinking and five effort levels. Tokenizers cannot tell M3 from M3.1, so the exact version is unconfirmed.
Could Space Bunny be made by OpenAI or Anthropic?
Very unlikely. Frontier US labs rarely give away free stealth previews, and the OpenAI or Claude traces people found can be explained by distilled training data. The tokenizer, which is hard to fake, matches MiniMax.
When will we find out who made Space Bunny?
Every stealth model on OpenRouter in 2026 was eventually claimed, usually within one to two weeks. Ox Alpha was named after six days and Union Alpha after about a day and a half. Expect a reveal when the free window closes.
Why would MiniMax release Space Bunny anonymously?
An anonymous launch gives a lab honest feedback and huge real-world traffic without brand bias or launch-day pressure. If the model has problems, they never attach to the company name.
Does the name Space Bunny mean anything?
Probably not. Previous codenames like Pony, Hunter, Owl, Ox and Union never matched the vendor. The rabbit may nod to the Mid-Autumn Jade Rabbit, but that is speculation.

Keep reading

MiniMax M3.1

What MiniMax has published about M3.1-Flash-Preview, what leaked, and how to access it.

Stealth Model History

Pony, Hunter, Owl, Ox, Union: every Alpha of 2026 and the lab behind it.

Reddit Theories

The r/opencode fingerprinting threads and the arguments against them.