Chinese artificial intelligence startup StepFun has developed Step-2, a trillion-parameter Mixture of Experts (MoE) language model with a 16k context length that ranks fifth globally on LiveBench evaluations. The model has surpassed GPT-4o and is just behind o1-mini, demonstrating China's rapid progress in AI technology despite GPU trade blockades. Remarkably, Step-2 was developed in just two months and trained at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI's GPT-4, with an estimated expenditure of $3 million compared to GPT-4's $80–$100 million. The emergence of Step-2, China's top-performing large language model, highlights the country's significant investments in AI and its growing competitiveness in the field.