DeepSeek releases open-source R1

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Open-source AI just hit a significant milestone with DeepSeek’s recent reasoning model matching ChatGPT’s capabilities on key benchmarks.

In a twist of irony, it is a Chinese company — not “Open”AI — that is sharing the whole lot openly while offering API access at just 5-10% of the associated fee.

Before we get into it: Our next live workshop on creating AI agents for meeting prep is today at 2:15 PM EST! Scroll to the community section of this email for details.

In today’s AI rundown:

• DeepSeek’s open-source R1 beats OpenAI o1

• Humanoid robots assemble iPhones in China

• Generate natural-sounding voices with AI

• UK’s supercomputer develops AI vaccines

• 4 recent AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

DEEPSEEK

🐋 DeepSeek’s open-source R1 beats OpenAI o1

The Rundown: Chinese AI lab DeepSeek just released DeepSeek-R1, an open-source reasoning model that reportedly matches or exceeds OpenAI’s o1 on certain benchmarks while costing just 5-10% of o1’s API price for developers.

The main points:

• Unlike traditional GPT models, R1 uses a reasoning approach much like OpenAI’s o1 that takes longer but produces more reliable ends in domains like physics, science, and math.

• The model comprises 671B parameters but additionally is available in smaller “distilled” versions, with as few as 1.5B parameters, that may run locally on a laptop.

• DeepSeek-R1 beats o1 on several key benchmarks, including AIME, MATH-500, and SWE-bench Verified.

• The model is available under an MIT license for business use and costs significantly lower than o1 ($0.14 vs $7.5 per million input tokens).

Why it matters: Open-source AI just achieved a major milestone by matching ChatGPT’s current capabilities on key benchmarks. And in an ironic twist, it is not OpenAI (which abandoned its original mission of open-source research) but Chinese company DeepSeek, openly sharing its models and training methodology.

TOGETHER WITH VANTA

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Join Vanta’s live webinar on January 29 to study:

• Key provisions of ISO 42001 and the way it prepares your organization for future AI laws

• Insights from Vanta’s experience in achieving ISO 42001 certification

• Tools to streamline compliance operations and maintain a competitive edge

Enroll now to remain one step ahead of AI compliance.

UBTECH

🤖 Humanoid robots assemble iPhones in China

The Rundown: Foxconn, Apple’s primary manufacturing partner in China, just signed a deal with UBTech to deploy humanoid robots for iPhone production, starting with the Walker S1 robot for complex assembly tasks.

The main points:

• UBTech’s Walker S1 stands 5’6” tall, weighs 167.6 kilos, and is designed to handle tasks from quality inspection to component assembly.

• The robots have already accomplished several months of coaching at Foxconn’s factories in Shenzhen.

• Initial deployment will prioritize tasks that impact employee health, like heavy lifting and repetitive motions.

• UBTech goals to develop into the primary company to attain business mass production of humanoid robots through this partnership.

Why it matters: With Figure’s humanoids in BMW factories, Apptronik’s in Mercedes, and now UBTech in Foxconn’s iPhone assembly lines, humanoid robots rapidly move from viral demos to real production floors. A serious shift in manufacturing has begun… and the transition may occur faster than most individuals realize.

AI TRAINING

🎤 Generate natural-sounding voices with AI

The Rundown: Kokoro’s recent frontier text-to-speech model means that you can convert your scripts into realistic speech in seconds.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit Hugging Face and locate the Kokoro-TTS space.

2. Select your language and preferred voice (search for ★ for stable versions).

3. Enter your text with natural punctuation for higher speech flow.

4. Adjust speed and trim settings to perfect your audio.

Pro tip: Test multiple voices and speeds – generation only takes seconds. This is ideal for quick voiceovers and audio content.

PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI

💼 Launch your AI consulting profession

The Rundown: Innovating with AI’s recent program, AI Consultancy Project, trains AI enthusiasts with the abilities and techniques to capitalize on the rapidly growing AI consulting market – which is about to 8x by 2032.

This system offers:

• The tools and frameworks to search out clients and deliver top-notch services

• A 6-month plan to construct a 6-figure AI consulting business

• Students getting their first AI client in as little as 3 days

Request early access to the AI Consultancy Project.

AI RESEARCH

🧪 UK’s supercomputer develops AI vaccines

The Rundown: The University of Bristol just unveiled Isambard-AI, a $276M supercomputer that uses AI to develop recent drugs and vaccines by simulating how molecules interact with the human body at an atomic level.

The main points:

• When fully operational this summer, Isambard-AI will likely be the UK’s strongest supercomputer and among the many top 10 fastest globally.

• The system is already getting used to develop vaccines for Alzheimer’s, treatments for heart disease, and improved melanoma detection.

• Unlike traditional methods, the system can test virtually tens of millions of potential drug mixtures, quickly identifying probably the most promising candidates.

• The supercomputer’s waste energy will likely be repurposed to heat local homes and businesses near its facility in Bristol.

Why it matters: While most tech giants are racing to construct supercomputers for AGI, the UK is focusing its $276M investment on solving immediate human challenges like disease. With systems like Isambard-AI, AlphaFold, and OpenAI’s recent AI model for longevity, we’re entering a brand new era of AI-powered medical breakthroughs.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 📸 Frames by Runway – AI image model with enhanced realism and stylistic control

• ⚙️ Devin 1.2 – Cognition’s updated AI coding assistant with improved context understanding, a browser-based workplace setup, and Slack audio integration

• 🔥 /extract – Turns any webpage into structured data from a URL and a prompt

• 📝 Spellar for iOS – AI Conversation companion and note taker in your pocket

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 📈 The Rundown – Marketing/Media Buyer

• 🤝 Synthesia – Deal Strategy Director

• 🔧 Shield AI – Technician, Hardware Test

• 📊 Luma AI – Controller

📰 Every part else in AI today

Free event – 2/5: AI & Personalization: Progress or Invasion of Privacy? Hear from a Walmart VP on the scalability & ethics of AI personalization. RSVP.*

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X that the corporate has not built AGI and won’t release it next month, saying the “Twitter hype is uncontrolled again.”

ByteDance debuted Trae, a macOS-based AI coding tool that provides automated project constructing and interactive dev assistance with support for each Chinese and English.

Liquid AI introduced LFM-7B, a brand new language model powered by LFM architecture, designed for enhanced chat capabilities in languages like Arabic and Japanese.

Codeium launched Windsurf Wave 2, an update to its AI-powered development platform featuring web search capabilities, automated learning patterns, improved code execution, and enhanced enterprise features.

Moonshot AI (an AI lab based in China) introduced Kimi k1.5, a brand new multimodal AI model that achieved SOTA on the short-CoT benchmark and reportedly has “joint reasoning over text and vision.”

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COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop on Tuesday at 2:15 PM EST and learn find out how to construct AI agents for fast pre-call meeting briefs using Lindy AI with Flo Crivello, Lindy’s visionary founder and CEO.

RSVP here. Not a member yet? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team