It looks like Rio 3.5 397B could've simply been a semi-failed embezzling of funding

The article discusses the Rio 3.5 397B model, which was initially claimed to be an advanced version built on Qwen 3.5 with significant enhancements but was later revealed to be merely a merge with the Nex N2 Pro without any additional training. The project's funding of R$500K (approximately $100K USD) has come under scrutiny, as the developers admitted to delivering a subpar result and stated that they would need to start the training process from scratch after the initial model was removed from Hugging Face. This incident highlights the importance of transparency and accountability in AI model development, particularly when public funding is involved.