Chinese AI lab DeepSeek has released an open version of DeepSeek-R1, its so-called reasoning model, that it claims performs as well as OpenAI’s o1 on certain AI benchmarks.
R1 is available from the AI dev platform Hugging Face under an MIT license, meaning it can be used commercially without restrictions. According to DeepSeek, R1 beats o1 on the benchmarks AIME, MATH-500, and SWE-bench Verified. AIME employs other models to evaluate a model’s performance, while MATH-500 is a collection of word problems. SWE-bench Verified, meanwhile, focuses on programming tasks.
Being a reasoning model, R1 effectively fact-checks itself, which helps it to avoid some of the pitfalls that normally trip up models. Reasoning models take a little longer — usually seconds to minutes longer — to arrive at solutions compared to a typical nonreasoning model. The upside is that they tend to be more reliable in domains such as physics, science, and math.
R1 contains 671 billion parameters, DeepSeek revealed in a technical report. Parameters roughly correspond to a model’s problem-solving skills, and models with more parameters generally perform better than those with fewer parameters.
671 billion parameters is massive, but DeepSeek also released “distilled” versions of R1 ranging in size from 1.5 billion parameters to 70 billion parameters. The smallest can run on a laptop. As for the full R1, it requires beefier hardware, but it is available through DeepSeek’s API at prices 90%-95% cheaper than OpenAI’s o1.
There is a downside to R1. Being a Chinese model, it’s subject to benchmarking by China’s internet regulator to ensure that its responses “embody core socialist values.” R1 won’t answer questions about Tiananmen Square, for example, or Taiwan’s autonomy.
Many Chinese AI systems, including other reasoning models, decline to respond to topics that might raise the ire of regulators in the country, such as speculation about the Xi Jinping regime.
R1 arrives days after the outgoing Biden administration proposed harsher export rules and restrictions on AI technologies for Chinese ventures. Companies in China were already prevented from buying advanced AI chips, but if the new rules go into effect as written, companies will be faced with stricter caps on both the semiconductor tech and models needed to bootstrap sophisticated AI systems.
In a policy document last week, OpenAI urged the U.S. government to support the development of U.S. AI, lest Chinese models match or surpass them in capability. In an interview with The Information, OpenAI’s VP of policy Chris Lehane singled out High Flyer Capital Management, DeepSeek’s corporate parent, as an organization of particular concern.
So far, at least three Chinese labs — DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Kimi, which is owned by Chinese unicorn Moonshot AI — have produced models that they claim rival o1. (Of note, DeepSeek was the first — it announced a preview of R1 in late November.) In a post on X, Dean Ball, an AI researcher at George Mason University, said that the trend suggests Chinese AI labs will continue to be “fast followers.”
“The impressive performance of DeepSeek’s distilled models […] means that very capable reasoners will continue to proliferate widely and be runnable on local hardware,” Ball wrote, “far from the eyes of any top-down control regime.”
