DeepSeek, MiniMax, ByteDance unveil new AI models on same day

DeepSeek on Friday launched the public beta of its V4-Flash model's official API, upgrading its agent capabilities and adding native support for the Responses API format and Codex compatibility. The release came as several other Chinese AI firms unveiled new products on the same day, underscoring the accelerating pace of development in China's artificial intelligence sector.

A Coordinated Show of Force

The announcements landed against the backdrop of intensifying competition between Chinese and American AI companies. MiniMax, a Shanghai-based startup listed in Hong Kong, released its H3 multimodal generation model, which can produce videos of up to 15 seconds in 2K resolution with native stereo sound in a single pass, according to Reuters. MiniMax said the model costs less than one-third of mainstream rivals at 2K resolution and that it planned to release H3's model weights within days.reuters

ByteDance also released Seedance 2.5, a video generation model that extends maximum single-video length from 15 seconds to 30 seconds, with applications in robotics training and autonomous driving simulation.globaltimes

DeepSeek said its upgraded V4-Flash now delivers benchmark scores "far surpassing" the V4-Pro-Preview, according to the company's changelog. The firm also indicated that an official release of DeepSeek-V4-Pro would follow soon. DeepSeek V4-Flash is priced at $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.28 per million output tokens, with a one-million-token context window.evolink+2

Price War and Geopolitical Tensions

The releases extend a pricing dynamic that has seen Chinese firms undercut U.S. competitors. CNBC reported this week that Chinese companies have ramped up cheaper alternatives to American AI while Beijing promotes its technology internationally. Open-source models developed in China now account for 41 percent of global downloads, and the top five models by call volume on OpenRouter in July were all Chinese, according to state broadcaster CCTV.cnbc+1

The competitive push comes as some senior U.S. officials have said they will investigate Chinese AI companies over allegations of "distillation" from leading American frontier models. China's Ministry of Commerce rejected the claims, saying they "lack factual basis and legal justification".globaltimes

Open-Source Strategy Takes Hold

MiniMax's decision to open-weight its video model marks a notable expansion of the open-source approach into video generation, where many prominent models remain proprietary. Hu Qimu, a professor at the Maritime Silk Road Institute of Huaqiao University, told the Global Times that the concentrated releases reflect "a period of concentrated breakthroughs" after years of sustained investment.reuters+1

"At its core, competition in AI is a competition of ecosystems, rather than a contest over individual technology," Hu said.globaltimes