DeepSeek says V4 marks a major improvement over prior models, especially in coding, a capability that has become central to AI agents and helped drive the success of tools like ChatGPT Codex and Claude Code. The release is also a milestone for China’s chip industry, with DeepSeek explicitly highlighting compatibility with domestic Huawei technology.

The release comes a year after DeepSeek rattled the US AI industry with R1, a model it claimed was trained at a fraction of the cost of leading US systems. DeepSeek has not disclosed V4’s training costs or what hardware it was trained on. US officials have accused the company of using banned Nvidia chips and Anthropic claims DeepSeek misused Claude to improve its own products.