Who Developed HappyHorse-1.0? The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Open-Source Dark Horse Storming the AI Video Generation Throne

Who Developed HappyHorse-1.0? The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Open-Source Dark Horse Storming the AI Video Generation Throne On April 8, 2026, the global AI video generation arena was completely set ablaze by a "Happy Horse." With no official launch event, no technical blog post, and no corporate backing, an open-source text-to-video model called HappyHorse-1.0 suddenly rocketed to the top of Artificial Analysis (the world's most authoritative AI evaluation platform) Video Arena leaderboard. In the text-to-video (no audio) category, it scored 1333–1357 Elo points, crushing the previously dominant ByteDance Seedance 2.0 (1273 points) by nearly 60 points. In the image-to-video (no audio) track, it set a new all-time high at 1391–1406 points. Even in the highly demanding audio-inclusive category, it secured a solid global second place, right behind Seedance 2.0. X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, and WeChat public accounts exploded with discussion. Netizens shouted: "This horse is absolutel