DeepSeek releases new version of its R1 reasoning AI model

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has released an update to the R1 reasoning AI model that took the tech world by storm when it was launched at the beginning of the year. The open-source model sent shockwaves through the AI industry as its efficient use of compute and memory resources helped it match leading US models’ performance at a fraction of the cost.

The new version, DeepSeek-R1-0528, has a whopping 685 billion parameters, meaning it can perform on par with competitors such as o3 from OpenAI and Gemini 2.5 Pro from Google.

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The company says the model’s accuracy has increased from 70% to 87.5%, which means that the risk of hallucinations has been significantly reduced. Furthermore, DeepSeek has reportedly become better at so-called vibe coding, where AI tools generate code based on natural-language conversations with programmers.

TechCrunch notes that Deepseek-R1-0528 likely cannot run on consumer computers without modification, which signals that the target audience is professional users.

The new version of DeepSeek can be downloaded from the Hugging Face platform. Detailed information on the changes is also available there.