Chinese startup DeepSeek has triggered a sell-off exceeding $1 trillion last month with the launch of its competitively priced AI reasoning model, R1. Amid initial success, the Hanghzhou-based company is now hastening the release of its successor, R2.
According to sources, DeepSeek hopes that R2 will enhance coding capabilities and expand reasoning to multiple languages beyond English. Details of the accelerated timeline for R2's release have not been previously reported.
Rivals are still digesting the implications of R1, which was built with less-powerful Nvidia chips but is competitive with those developed at the costs of hundreds of billions of dollars by United States-based tech giants.
"The launch of DeepSeek's R2 model could be a pivotal moment in the AI industry," said Vijayasimha Alilughatta, chief operating officer of Indian tech services provider Zensar. R2 is likely to worry the US government, which has identified leadership of AI as a national priority. Its release may further galvanise Chinese authorities and companies, dozens of which say they have started integrating DeepSeek models into their products.