After launching their competitively priced AI reasoning model, R1, last month, Chinese firm DeepSeek caused a sell-off of over $1 trillion, causing a massive upheaval in the world’s stock markets.
Insiders claim that the Hangzhou-based company is already accelerating the development of its next-generation model, R2, in anticipation of releasing it ahead of the originally planned May launch, following the success of R1.
DeepSeek is certain that R2 will enhance coding performance and expand its reasoning powers to include languages other than English, even though precise release dates have not been disclosed.
The faster schedule for R2’s rollout has not been mentioned in any previous reports. DeepSeek did not reply when contacted for comment.
R1, which was created using less potent Nvidia chips but is nevertheless comparable with models created by US tech titans at costs of hundreds of billions of dollars, is still having an influence on rivals.
“The release of DeepSeek’s R2 model could be a game-changer for the AI sector,” said Vijayasimha Alilughatta, COO of Zensar, an Indian tech services company. The capacity of DeepSeek to create affordable AI models, he continued, “could prompt companies around the world to speed up their own initiatives, potentially disrupting the established dominance of a few major players.”
The US government, which sees leadership in AI as a national priority, is probably going to be concerned about the debut of R2.
Its introduction may also invigorate Chinese authorities and businesses, many of which claim to have begun integrating DeepSeek’s models into their offerings.
