DeepSeek
Open-weight Chinese models with strong reasoning and coding, available as chat and API.
DeepSeek is a Chinese AI lab whose models compete on reasoning and coding while being published as open weights. The second half is the part that matters structurally: most labs at this capability level ship an API and nothing else, so anyone with a compliance constraint or a private-deployment requirement is locked out. Open weights remove that gate. In practice DeepSeek is worth reaching for on problems where you want the chain of reasoning visible, and worth knowing about as the fallback when a workload cannot leave your own infrastructure.
Best for
- Coding and mathematical reasoning
- Self-hosting an open-weight model
- Cost-sensitive API workloads
Key features
- Chat and an open API platform on the same account
- Reasoning-focused models that show their working
- Weights published openly for local or private deployment
Why it matters
Publishing competitive weights openly changes who gets to run a frontier-class model, not just who gets to call one.
