DeepSeek AI Rivals Anthropic Claude Opus, 99% Cheaper

DeepSeek has unveiled a new AI model that reportedly approaches the performance of Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8. This V4-Flash model is said to match Claude Opus 4.8 on key benchmarks, but costs approximately 99% less to operate. DeepSeek's experimental V4-Flash-Vision-Exp model also brings multimodal capabilities, allowing it to process visual prompts like images and screenshots. The company states its performance on text-based tasks remains comparable with its V4 Flash model, covering reasoning and general world knowledge. The experimental model performs close to Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 in tests focusing on multimodal agentic capabilities. These capabilities help AI systems carry out actions with less continuous user prompting. DeepSeek is making this model available through its API. This development highlights the intensifying competition in the AI sector, with Chinese models increasingly matching leading systems at lower prices.