And they're going to train an LLM with all kinds of extra difficulties compared to OpenAI for just 13.5M?
The very first Llama was 16M for one training.
All these tiny niche models are perhaps fun as an academic exercise or great for the researchers resume but I highly doubt that they'll add any value or will be used for anything serious.
Even if this becomes a somewhat decent model with a fantastic understanding of "gezellig", "kring verjaardag" or "pannenkoeken", how many people will interact with it before the limits of it will drive them back to a frontier model?
Even if the purpose of this is government & other regulated industries, do we really want our government to use a poor model? Either do it right or don't do it at all.