Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has released an update to its R1 reasoning model, increasing pressure on U.S. rivals like OpenAI.

The update, named R1-0528, was launched on developer platform Hugging Face in the early hours of Thursday. However, the company has not made an official public announcement or shared a detailed model description.

Despite the quiet release, early results suggest strong performance. The LiveCodeBench leaderboard, a benchmark created by researchers at UC Berkeley, MIT, and Cornell, ranked the updated R1 model just behind OpenAI’s o4 mini and o3 in code generation. It also ranked ahead of xAI’s Grok 3 mini and Alibaba’s Qwen 3.

• DeepSeek’s R1-0528 is now publicly available on Hugging Face
• Ranked closely behind top models from OpenAI on key benchmarks

Bloomberg first reported the update on Wednesday. According to the report, a DeepSeek representative revealed in a WeChat group that the company had completed a “minor trial upgrade” and invited users to begin testing.

The move comes as global AI competition heats up. Google’s Gemini has introduced discounted access tiers, while OpenAI recently released the o3 Mini, a lightweight model with reduced computing demands.

Meanwhile, DeepSeek is widely expected to launch a next-generation model. In March, Reuters reported that R2, a successor to the R1 line, was initially planned for release in May.

In the same month, DeepSeek also upgraded its V3 large language model, highlighting its ongoing efforts to keep pace with industry leaders.

Though it remains relatively quiet about its releases, DeepSeek’s performance on recognized benchmarks signals growing competitiveness in the AI space.

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