A year after DeepSeek stunned markets with a low-cost AI breakthrough, Chinese rivals are lining up fresh model launches with stronger consumer appeal.
DeepSeek’s rapid rise during early 2025 reshaped China’s AI ecosystem, pushing open-source, budget-friendly models to the industry’s center.
This year, multiple firms plan releases around China’s Spring Festival, raising expectations after DeepSeek proved advanced AI could emerge despite U.S. chip restrictions.
Analysts say the surprise now would be disappointment, as competition intensifies and benchmarks for performance, efficiency, and usability have sharply risen.
Zhipu AI has unveiled a model with enhanced coding and autonomous task execution, while ByteDance launched Seedance 2.0 for cinematic-quality video generation.
ByteDance is also preparing upgrades to its Doubao chatbot, while DeepSeek and Alibaba are expected to release next-generation models with stronger reasoning capabilities.
DeepSeek’s debut triggered a global tech selloff last year and cemented low-cost AI as the new norm, with Chinese models operating far cheaper than U.S. peers.
Rivals now balance imitation and divergence, monetising AI through consumer services, while DeepSeek prioritises research freedom under its hedge-fund ownership structure.
