{"id":306118,"date":"2026-02-28T07:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T07:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/306118\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T07:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T07:07:09","slug":"deepseek-to-release-long-awaited-ai-model-in-new-challenge-to-us-rivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/306118\/","title":{"rendered":"DeepSeek to release long-awaited AI model in new challenge to US rivals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

DeepSeek is set to release its latest large language model next week, more than a year since its last major release in a fresh test of China\u2019s ambitions to challenge US rivals in AI.<\/p>\n

The Hangzhou-based lab plans to unveil V4, a \u201cmultimodal\u201d model with picture, video and text-generating functions, according to two people familiar with the matter. <\/p>\n

They said DeepSeek<\/a> had worked with Chinese AI chipmakers Huawei and Cambricon to optimise V4 for their latest products, according to two people with knowledge of those arrangements. <\/p>\n

That move signals broader Chinese efforts to avoid reliance on Nvidia\u2019s market-leading AI<\/a> chips that are subject to Washington export controls designed to curb the country\u2019s technological rise. <\/p>\n

DeepSeek\u2019s new release is timed ahead of next week\u2019s annual parliamentary \u201cTwo Sessions\u201d meetings, which start on March 4. The high-profile political gathering could further cement DeepSeek\u2019s status as a national AI champion. <\/p>\n

It will be the first major model launch by DeepSeek since January 2025, when it unveiled its R1 reasoning model. The company claimed to have built a system comparable to leading Silicon Valley models using only a fraction of the computing power.<\/p>\n

That move sent shockwaves through US tech stocks, which some experts described as a \u201cSputnik\u201d moment that signalled China\u2019s rapid advance as an AI power.<\/p>\n

Since then, DeepSeek has issued incremental updates rather than a full new model launch, allowing domestic rivals including Alibaba and Moonshot to capture demand for low-cost, open-source Chinese models.<\/p>\n

DeepSeek\u2019s effort to optimise V4 for Chinese-made chips is expected to bolster local demand for its semiconductors and accelerate the transition away from US chipmakers Nvidia and AMD for \u201cinference\u201d \u2014 generating responses from a trained model.<\/p>\n

Reuters was first to report on DeepSeek\u2019s work with Huawei and Cambricon.<\/p>\n

DeepSeek has not worked with Nvidia to optimise its model for its products, according to another person with knowledge of the matter.<\/p>\n

Nvidia continues to dominate the market for training chips, particularly for the computationally intensive pre-training phase in which models ingest vast amounts of data. <\/p>\n

The FT previously reported that DeepSeek had attempted to carry out this initial training on Huawei hardware but encountered technical difficulties.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"Montage<\/a><\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s R1 release was published alongside a detailed technical report on DeepSeek\u2019s engineering techniques that used Nvidia chips more efficiently to train and run its model.<\/p>\n

DeepSeek was praised for sharing its training methods for developing a \u201creasoning model\u201d, which then allowed other labs to study and implement their findings. Reasoning models are designed to solve complex problems by breaking them up into smaller steps. <\/p>\n

DeepSeek is expected to publish a shorter technical note alongside V4 next week, followed by a more comprehensive report about a month later, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the week, Anthropic accused DeepSeek<\/a> and two other Chinese AI labs of \u201cdistillation attacks\u201d on its models, a practice of training smaller models on the outputs of more advanced systems, allowing them to replicate the US company\u2019s performance without using the same computing resources.<\/p>\n

Huawei, DeepSeek and Cambricon did not respond to requests for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-306118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}