Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has released a significant update to its open-source reasoning model, bringing it closer to competing with paid services from OpenAI and Google. The new DeepSeek-R1-0528 model shows substantial improvements in complex reasoning tasks across mathematics, science, and programming. VentureBeat’s Carl Franzen reports that the updated model achieved 87.5% accuracy on the … Read more
Prime Intellect has introduced INTELLECT-2, a 32B parameter AI model that represents the first of its kind trained using globally distributed reinforcement learning. The model employs a decentralized approach, utilizing compute resources from contributors around the world rather than centralized GPU clusters. In a technical report, Prime Intellect details their custom-built infrastructure components, including PRIME-RL, … Read more
Microsoft has introduced three new small language models (SLMs) focused on complex reasoning tasks: Phi-4-reasoning, Phi-4-reasoning-plus, and Phi-4-mini-reasoning. These models represent a significant advancement in what small AI models can accomplish, particularly in mathematical reasoning and multi-step problem solving. The flagship Phi-4-reasoning-plus, a 14-billion parameter model, demonstrates performance that rivals much larger AI systems. According … Read more
Alibaba has released Qwen3, a new family of large language models that compete with leading AI systems from OpenAI and Google. The lineup includes two mixture-of-experts (MoE) models and six dense models, with parameters ranging from 0.6 billion to 235 billion. According to benchmarks shared by Alibaba, the flagship Qwen3-235B-A22B model outperforms DeepSeek R1 and … Read more
French AI startup Pleias has released two open-source small reasoning models specifically designed for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with native citation support. As reported by Carl Franzen for VentureBeat, the new models—Pleias-RAG-350M and Pleias-RAG-1B—are available under the Apache 2.0 license, allowing commercial use. Despite their small size, the models outperform many larger alternatives on multi-hop reasoning … Read more
A startup called Nari Labs has released Dia, a new open-source text-to-speech model designed to produce naturalistic dialogue. According to VentureBeat reporter Carl Franzen, the 1.6 billion parameter model rivals offerings from ElevenLabs, OpenAI, and Google’s NotebookLM. Co-creator Toby Kim developed Dia “with zero funding” and Google’s support through access to TPU chips. The model … Read more
Google has released new versions of its Gemma 3 AI models that can run on consumer-grade graphics cards through a technique called Quantization-Aware Training (QAT). This development makes powerful AI models accessible to users without high-end hardware. The company announced that QAT dramatically reduces memory requirements while maintaining high quality performance. Gemma 3’s largest 27B … Read more
Deep Cogito, a San Francisco-based AI startup, has emerged from stealth with the release of Cogito v1, a new line of open source large language models featuring hybrid reasoning capabilities. Carl Franzen from VentureBeat reports that the models, fine-tuned from Meta’s Llama 3.2, can either answer immediately or engage in “self-reflection” similar to OpenAI’s “o” … Read more
Nvidia has launched Llama-3.1-Nemotron-Ultra-253B, a fully open-source language model that outperforms the larger DeepSeek R1 on several benchmarks despite having less than half the parameters. Carl Franzen of VentureBeat reports the model is now available on Hugging Face with open weights and training data. The 253-billion parameter model features a unique toggle for “reasoning on” … Read more
Meta has released its newest generation of artificial intelligence models, Llama 4, introducing three variants with improved capabilities. The weekend release included two immediate offerings – Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick – with a third model, Llama 4 Behemoth, still in development. According to Meta, Llama 4 models mark “the beginning of a … Read more