DeepSeek, a Chinese AI research company backed by hedge fund High-Flyer Capital Management, has released DeepSeek-R1-Lite-Preview, a new AI model designed to rival OpenAI’s o1. The model specializes in reasoning capabilities, allowing it to spend extended time considering questions before providing answers.
According to DeepSeek, their model performs comparably to OpenAI’s o1 on established AI benchmarks like AIME and MATH. The model demonstrates chain-of-thought reasoning, showing users its thought process while solving problems. However, testing has revealed some limitations, including difficulties with logic puzzles and restrictions on politically sensitive topics related to China.
The model is currently available through DeepSeek Chat, with a daily limit of 50 messages in its advanced “Deep Think” mode. While DeepSeek plans to open-source the model and release an API, the company has not yet published technical documentation explaining the model’s architecture or training methods. The development represents part of a broader industry shift toward new AI approaches, particularly in test-time compute.
Sources: TechCrunch, VentureBeat