China’s AI upstart DeepSeek drops new model. Will it make waves like last year?

 

A citizen is watching a display board about DepSeek AI big model in a shopping mall in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China on April 23, 2026. 

CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty Images

Hong Kong —  

China’s DeepSeek unveiled a preview version of its much-anticipated new model on Friday, promising to rival models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google a year after the then little-known start up took the global AI industry by storm.

The Hangzhou-based company highlighted major upgrades in the new model V4’s reasoning and agentic abilities that could act autonomously on one’s behalf, like writing code. It also boasted new capabilities that enhance the model’s efficiency in processing larger numbers of tokens, the fundamental units of information which AI models use to comprehend instructions.

DeepSeek became the poster child for China’s AI boom after its groundbreaking 2025 release of the R1 model that delivered near industry-leading performance – for allegedly a fraction of the price.

The breakout success tumbled American AI stocks, raising questions about the ever-larger investments into data center buildouts. At the same time, it bolstered confidence in Chinese technology and heated up the tech race with the US.