DeepSeek Unveils Updated R1 AI Model, Challenging Industry Giants

Reviewed byNidhi Govil

17 Sources

Share

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek releases an update to its R1 reasoning model, claiming improved performance and reduced hallucinations, while also introducing a smaller, distilled version for broader accessibility.

DeepSeek Unveils Updated R1 Model

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has released an update to its R1 reasoning model, dubbed DeepSeek-R1-0528, on the developer platform Hugging Face

1

. This update comes as a "minor trial upgrade" according to the company's WeChat announcement

5

. The updated model, weighing in at 685 billion parameters, is released under a permissive MIT license, allowing for commercial use

1

.

Source: Analytics Insight

Source: Analytics Insight

Improved Performance and Reduced Hallucinations

DeepSeek claims that the new R1 update has significantly improved its depth of reasoning and inference capabilities

3

. The company states that the model now has a reduced "hallucination" rate and can perform better in mathematics, programming, and general logic compared to its previous version

4

. DeepSeek asserts that the overall performance of R1-0528 is approaching that of leading models such as OpenAI's O3 and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro

3

.

Distilled Version for Broader Accessibility

Alongside the full-sized R1 update, DeepSeek has also released a smaller, "distilled" version called DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B

2

. This model, built using Alibaba's Qwen3-8B as a foundation, is designed to run on a single GPU, making it more accessible for both academic research and industrial development of small-scale models

2

.

Source: Tom's Guide

Source: Tom's Guide

Benchmark Performance

The distilled version of R1 has shown impressive performance on certain benchmarks. DeepSeek claims that it outperforms Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash on the AIME 2025 math test and nearly matches Microsoft's Phi 4 reasoning plus model on the HMMT math skills test

2

. Additionally, the LiveCodeBench leaderboard ranks DeepSeek's updated R1 reasoning model just slightly behind OpenAI's O4 mini and O3 reasoning models on code generation, while surpassing xAI's Grok 3 mini and Alibaba's Qwen 3

5

.

Source: The Verge

Source: The Verge

Impact on the AI Industry

DeepSeek's R1 model initially shook up the AI industry in January 2025 by rivaling systems from much larger US developers at a fraction of the cost

4

. This latest update further intensifies the competition in the AI space, challenging the view that scaling AI requires vast computing power and investment

5

. In response to DeepSeek's advancements, other tech giants have made strategic moves:

  1. Chinese companies like Alibaba and Tencent have released models claiming to surpass DeepSeek's

    5

    .
  2. Google's Gemini has introduced discounted tiers of access

    5

    .
  3. OpenAI has cut prices and released an O3 Mini model that relies on less computing power

    5

    .
TheOutpost.ai

Your Daily Dose of Curated AI News

Don’t drown in AI news. We cut through the noise - filtering, ranking and summarizing the most important AI news, breakthroughs and research daily. Spend less time searching for the latest in AI and get straight to action.

© 2025 Triveous Technologies Private Limited
Instagram logo
LinkedIn logo