AWS and Microsoft Azure Integrate DeepSeek's R1 AI Model, Challenging Industry Norms

AWS Adds DeepSeek's R1 AI Model To Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker

'DeepSeek R1 is the latest foundation model to capture the imagination of the industry,' said AWS CEO Matt Garman. "We've always been focused on making it easy to get started with emerging and popular models right away, and we're giving customers a lot of ways to test out DeepSeek AI," said AWS CEO Matt Garman in a LinkedIn post. AWS customers can now deploy DeepSeek's R1 Distill Llama models on Amazon Bedrock. Bedrock customers can utilize AWS' Custom Model Import feature, which allows users to integrate their fine-tuned models -- like DeepSeek R1 -- seamlessly into the Bedrock environment. "Customers can run the distilled Llama and Qwen DeepSeek models on Amazon SageMaker AI, use the distilled Llama models on Amazon Bedrock with Custom Model Import, or train DeepSeek models with SageMaker via Hugging Face," said AWS' CEO. [Related: AWS CEO On President Trump, New AI Model And $8.3B Cloud Infrastructure Investment] The $110 billion Seatle-based AWS has poured billions into AI hardware and innovation over the past several years. For example, just this month, AWS launched its new video Luma AI model for Bedrock as well as a $8.3 billion investment in AI and cloud infrastructure in India. "DeepSeek R1 is the latest foundation model to capture the imagination of the industry," said Garman. DeepSeek Shakes Up AI Market DeepSeek -- which offers similar technology to OpenAI's ChatGPT -- has taken the AI world by storm in 2025. The Chinese AI startup released its newest AI model R1 this month, which has been hailed as a game changer due to its AI benchmark performance alongside its training price. AI training can be extremely costly due to the price of GPUs. While OpenAI's GPT-4 training cost was upwards of $100 million, DeepSeek said R1's cost was less than $6 million to train. DeepSeek's less than $6 million price tag to build R1 sent shockwaves through the industry as most AI companies pour tens of millions into building AI models. For example, AI hardware kingpin Nvidia saw a record stock market decline on Monday of approximately $600 billion due to its stock dropping 17 percent after DeepSeek unveiled R1. AWS Partner: Adding DeepSeek Shows 'Amazon Will Host The Hottest AI Models' One top executive from a solution provider that's an AWS premium tier services partner said AWS is showing a clear message that it will host the most innovative AI models on its platforms regardless of if its homegrown models or from third parties. "AWS' super rapid response to the DeepSeek headlines, is basically, 'Yeah, of course it will work on AWS. We're not worried. And guess what, for the next AI model to grab headlines -- it'll be on Bedrock too,'" said the executive who declined to be identified. "Amazon will host the hottest AI models in the market on top of AWS. That's the position they're taking. We love it. ... We're all for interoperability with the latest and great models for our customers." Garman echoed a similar message to AWS customers and partners. "We've always believed that no single model is right for every use case, and customers can expect all kinds of new options to emerge in the future," said Garman. "That's why Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker AI make it seamless for customers to test and evaluate the latest models as they emerge and pick the best ones based on their unique needs." Amazon is set to report AWS' financial earnings results for fourth quarter 2024 on Feb. 6.

China's DeepSeek-R1 Lands On Microsoft Azure And AWS -- The Same Model That Shook Silicon Valley - Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Enterprises can now access DeepSeek-R1, a Chinese reasoning model, through cloud giants Microsoft Corporation MSFT and Amazon.com, Inc.'s AMZN Web Services, or AWS. What Happened: Microsoft has made DeepSeek-R1 accessible on GitHub and through the Azure AI Foundry's model catalog. The Foundry provides developers with tools for experimentation, iteration, and integration of the model's capabilities into various workflows, along with security and evaluation tools. Subscribe to the Benzinga Tech Trends newsletter to get all the latest tech developments delivered to your inbox. AWS offers DeepSeek-R1 on its SageMaker platform, which is designed for building, training, and deploying custom models. AWS customers can use the Hugging Face open-source platform to train DeepSeek on SageMaker. See Also: DeepSeek's AI Model Shook Wall Street, But A New Report Says Chinese State Accounts Helped Fan The Flames Why It Matters: DeepSeek's R1 has gained recognition for its performance, reportedly surpassing other leading AI models, including OpenAI's ChatGPT. API access to DeepSeek-R1 starts at $0.14 per million tokens, roughly equivalent to 750,000 words. The latest DeepSeek model is considered closest in capability to OpenAI's "o1" model, which is priced at $7.50 per million tokens. In just two months and with under $6 million, the startup said it built a highly cost-effective AI model. This achievement also challenges the notion that large-scale GPU investments are essential. On Monday, Nvidia Corporation NVDA, the top U.S. producer of high-performance AI chips, experienced a 17% drop in its stock, wiping out around $600 billion in market value -- marking its largest single-day loss. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq 100 fell over 3% on the same day, its steepest decline since Dec. 18. Previously, Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity AI also launched a self-hosted version of DeepSeek-R1. The availability of DeepSeek-R1 on these platforms comes amid heightened scrutiny from the U.S. government. The White House has announced that the National Security Council is examining the implications of DeepSeek, citing potential national security risks. Check out more of Benzinga's Consumer Tech coverage by following this link. Read Next: Apple's iPad Turns 15 Today: Here's A Throwback To When Steve Jobs Explained Called It The 'Third Category' After Phones And Notebooks Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Image created using artificial intelligence via Midjourney. AMZNAmazon.com Inc$236.660.86%Overview Rating:Good62.5%Technicals Analysis1000100Financials Analysis400100WatchlistOverviewMSFTMicrosoft Corp$419.901.18%NVDANVIDIA Corp$123.23-1.14%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs