DeepSeek’s updated R1 reasoning AI model might be getting the bulk of the AI community’s attention this week. But the Chinese AI lab also released a smaller, “distilled” version of its new R1, DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B, that DeepSeek claims beats comparably sized models on certain benchmarks.

DeepSeek’s R1 model gets an update with major improvements in reasoning and output, signaling China’s growing influence in the global AI race.

Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek released the first update to its hit R1 reasoning model in the early hours of Thursday, stepping up competition with U.S. rivals such as OpenAI.