DeepSeek has gotten OpenAI fired up

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01.31.25

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Hi everyone! I'm Zoë Schiffer, WIRED's (very new) director of business and industry—and also Steven Levy's editor—stepping in for him this week. It feels like January has lasted a year, hmm? Just last month we were ready to ban TikTok. Look at us now.

It's been just over a week since DeepSeek upended the AI world. The introduction of its open-weight model—apparently trained on a fraction of the specialized computing chips that power industry leaders—set off shock waves inside OpenAI. Not only did employees claim to see hints that DeepSeek had "inappropriately distilled" OpenAI's models to create its own, but the startup's success had Wall Street questioning whether companies like OpenAI were wildly overspending on compute.

"DeepSeek R1 is AI's Sputnik moment," wrote Marc Andreessen, one of Silicon Valley's most influential and provocative inventors, on X.

In response, OpenAI is preparing to launch a new model today, ahead of its originally planned schedule. The model, o3-mini, will debut in both API and chat. Sources say it has o1 level reasoning with 4o-level speed. In other words, it's fast, cheap, smart, and designed to crush DeepSeek.

The moment has galvanized OpenAI staff. Inside the company, there's a feeling that—particularly as DeepSeek dominates the conversation—OpenAI must become more efficient or risk falling behind its newest competitor.

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In 2023, Steven Levy provided a definitive look inside OpenAI in the months before its various, highly publicized upheavals. Even then, the tensions that are boiling over today were already apparent.

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Zoë Schiffer, Director, Business and Industry

You can submit questions to mail@wired.com. Write ASK LEVY in the subject line.