DeepSeek Touts Model That Outdoes Flagship in Agentic AI Step

DeepSeek unveiled an update to an older model that it says surpasses the seminal R1 on key benchmarks, keeping the Chinese startup in the game while the industry awaits its next flagship offering.

The V3.1 returns answers to queries much faster and marks the startup’s first step toward creating an AI agent, DeepSeek said in a WeChat post Thursday. The company first outlined the V3.1 earlier this week, but the platform only just made it to the Hugging Face portal. The version has been customized to work with next-generation Chinese-made AI chips, the startup said in a separate message.

DeepSeek ...