DeepSeek announces open-source AI to compete with GPT-5 and Gemini

Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek has introduced two new models focused on reasoning, demonstrating that open-source systems from China are now matching and, in some cases, surpassing the performance of leading US AI developers in mathematics and coding assessments.

The Hangzhou-based company announced DeepSeek-V3.2 and the more advanced DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale on December 1.

According to DeepSeek, both open-source versions offer reasoning results on par with OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s Gemini 3 Pro.

The Speciale version achieved gold-standard performance in four major competitions: the International Mathematical Olympiad, the Chinese Mathematical Olympiad, the ICPC World Finals, and the 2025 International Olympiad in Informatics.

Surpassed GPT-5 and Gemini in mathematics test

In the 2025 American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale scored 96.0%.

This result is higher than GPT-5 High’s score of 94.6% and Gemini 3 Pro’s score of 95.0%.

The model achieved a score of 73.1% on the SWE Verified test, a key benchmark for coding proficiency, but this score was behind Gemini 3 Pro’s 76.2%.

China’s open-source push is strengthening

This development marks another step in China’s effort to challenge US leadership in artificial intelligence through open-source innovation.

Founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng and backed by the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer, DeepSeek is positioning itself as a producer of high-performance, low-cost AI systems that can compete with Silicon Valley’s proprietary systems.

Bloomberg noted that DeepSeek-V3.2 is the successor to the previous V3.2-Exp model introduced in September. The new model is now accessible through DeepSeek’s application, website, and API.

The standard V3.2 is designed as a “daily use model” offering GPT-5 level capabilities with strong efficiency, while the V3.2-Speciale version is optimized for maximum reasoning power on highly complex problems.

China takes the lead in open-source downloads

Recent findings show that China has surpassed the US in open-source artificial intelligence model downloads.

Research conducted by MIT and Hugging Face revealed that Chinese models now account for 17% of global downloads, while the share of American models is 15.8%.

Analysts attribute this shift to China’s rapid release cycles and its emphasis on lightweight, accessible models that perform well on less advanced hardware.

This approach has been partly shaped by US export restrictions on high-quality AI chips.

Competition is accelerating within China

Meanwhile, China’s AI industry is becoming increasingly competitive. Other major players like Alibaba and Baidu are also rapidly developing their own systems.

Alibaba’s Qwen 3 model recently achieved excellent results on the AIME 2025 and several other mathematics tests.

According to Stanford’s 2025 Artificial Intelligence Index Report, China is responsible for approximately 70% of global AI-related patent applications.

‘Reasoning-first models built for agents’

DeepSeek’s technical documentation describes the V3.2 family as “reasoning-first models built for agents.”

The models are supported by a new training methodology that synthesizes over 85,000 difficult tasks across 1,800 different environments.

The company also states that V3.2 is the first model to embed reasoning directly into tool-use workflows.

This feature allows the model to switch between reasoning and non-reasoning modes when using external tools such as code executors or search assistants.

The V3.2-Speciale model, which will be accessible only via API until December 15, requires more processing resources but is designed to deliver what DeepSeek calls “fully maximized reasoning capacity.”

Both variants include the DeepSeek Sparse Attention method, a technique aimed at reducing the computational cost of processing long inputs by roughly 50-70%.