Alibaba's HappyHorse 1.1 Climbs to No. 2 in AI Video Rankings as Sora and Seedance Exit
In brief: Alibaba Cloud launched HappyHorse 1.1 on June 23, 2026. The model scored 1,444 on Arena.ai's video leaderboard — good for No. 2 globally — as OpenAI's Sora shuts down and ByteDance's Seedance halts its international rollout.
Key facts
- Released June 23 via Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, Bailian platform, and fal.ai; full enterprise API available immediately
- Key upgrades over 1.0: native audio sync, multilingual lip-sync, 9-image reference input, 1080p output
- Arena.ai ranking: No. 2 in both text-to-video (score 1,444) and image-to-video — ahead of Google Veo-3.1 by 69 points in text-to-video
- OpenAI discontinued Sora citing financial unsustainability; ByteDance shelved Seedance 2.0's global launch indefinitely after copyright complaints from Hollywood studios
- 40% sitewide launch discount running for two weeks
Why it matters
The AI video market's two leading Western-adjacent products — Sora and Seedance — have simultaneously withdrawn from the global stage, and Alibaba moved fastest to fill the gap. It's the clearest moment yet where a Chinese Big Tech model has outranked its American counterparts on an open leaderboard. The four-way race between HappyHorse, Google Veo, Runway, and Kling is now the real story in generative video.
Read more
- TechNode — TechNode
- VentureBeat — VentureBeat