SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 19 — Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has released a faster, leaner version of its AI model, reporting improved benchmark scores and shorter response times compared with its predecessor.

Bloomberg reported that the Chinese AI developer released DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 on October 17, with the updated version available through its website, app and developer platform.

In results published on Hugging Face, DeepSeek said the new model scored 42.6 on Humanity’s Last Exam without tools, up from 36.8 for the previous V4.1-Flash version.

The benchmark tests AI systems on difficult questions spanning mathematics, science and the humanities, while DeepSeek’s technical report also listed improvements in software development and other tasks involving AI agents.