Deepseek R1 was eating the world At the beginning of the year. This Chinese model, apparently out of nowhere, caused A true shock In the AI industry, but since then there has been movement. Actually there has been one, but the disturbing thing is precisely what that movement has been.
Hi, Deepseek v3.1. The startup advertisement Last week the launch of Deepseek V3.1, a new version that stood out for being an improved hybrid of Deepseek V3 (fast response) and Deepseek R1 (reasoning). There was also good news in terms of their performance: according to the Benchmarks published by those responsible, it was significantly higher than their predecessors.
Visible (but non -dramatic) improvements. In the “model card” (model card) that those responsible offers In Hugging FaceDeepseek v3.1 (in reasoning mode) proved to behave slightly better than Deepseek R1-0528, —Your previous version, more powerful-in areas such as programming or in mathematical tests, but some users who have tried it there comment That except in those areas, the model is worse and “it behaves poorly when following instructions or prompts provided by users.” Others confirm it and They assure which is useful for programmers, but not for other areas. It also has limitations on its multimodal support, and focuses on the text instead of providing more options for another type of interaction, for example from voice, image, video or audio messages.
A Chinese model for Chinese chips. But even more interesting it was that Deepseek V3.1 has been designed and launched with a clear objective: avoiding the dependence of foreign chips. The FP8 precision used makes this model behave very well In the next -generation Chinese chips. The strategy seems very interesting for the startup, which could thus have a very aligned model with the priorities of the Chinese government. This is: use local models for local chips as much as possible.
And R1, what? From there some doubts arise. The first, which affects Deepseek R1, the model with which the startup “broke” the market at the beginning of the year. The company has eliminated all references to this model in the characteristic of “deep thought”, which has generated doubts about the potential appearance of its expected successor, a hypothetical Deepseek R2.
Loses users. But while that theoretical model comes – if it does – the company faces a more immediate threat. As they point out In SCMPDeepseek is losing users (or at least relevance) in recent months. In the first quarter of the year its market share within the scope of the IA Open Source models used on the PPIO cloud platform was a spectacular 99%. However, in the second quarter that percentage has dropped to 80%.
Fierce competition. That fall relevance has an obvious reason: its local competitors are squeezing. And a lot. Among them is the family of models Qwen from Alibaba, but Also others like Kimi-K2-Instructof the startup Mosohot AI – in which Alibaba has also invested – which is becoming one of the most popular models of recent weeks.
Delays and deceleration. Precisely the focus on being able to make the most of future Chinese chips seems to be the reason that this hypothetical Deepseek R2 is being delayed. At least that is the hypothesis that consider In Financial Timeswhere they revealed that the startup has failed when trying to train with Huawei chips. The situation has made them Training with Nvidia chipsand that are using the Huawei Asce for the inference stage, that is, the interaction with the model via web or API by users.
But this attitude is “very Chinese”. We may in Western countries we are accustomed to a much more frantic pace and that we expect constant updates and improvements with an eye on the short term. In China, philosophy is usually the opposite, and companies adopt A long -term strategy even if immediate benefits are lost. Maintaining a low profile is also usual among those companies, which try not to make much noise … until they do, as Depseek has already demonstrated. Thus, we will have to remain very attentive to the activity of this startup, because surely he will be working to continue being one of the protagonists of the AI panorama.
Image | Tim Reckmann
In Xataka | Deepseek has suggested that Nvidia chips no longer needs. We believe to know who is buying them
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