The Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek recently released its new model, DeepSeek V3.1, which is freely available as open source. According to an article by Michael Nuñez in VentureBeat, early tests show its performance rivals that of leading proprietary systems from American companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. The model quickly gained popularity among developers after its unannounced release on the Hugging Face platform.
DeepSeek V3.1 achieved a high score on a prestigious coding benchmark, establishing it as a top-performing model. It processes large amounts of information, equivalent to a 400-page book, and integrates chat, reasoning, and coding functions into a single system. AI researcher Andrew Christianson, cited in the article, noted that the model is not only powerful but also significantly more cost-effective than competitors, delivering comparable results at a fraction of the price.
By making such a powerful tool freely available, DeepSeek directly challenges the business models of major AI labs that typically charge for access. The open-source strategy democratizes access to advanced AI, allowing anyone to download, modify, and deploy the technology. This move is seen as a strategic challenge to American AI dominance and could accelerate innovation by removing cost barriers and usage restrictions for developers worldwide.