DeepSeek V4.1 Flash release may shift Kimi K3.1 launch timing
The post says DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 broke Chinese labs' silence, and its aggressive price-performance positioning could affect the release timing of Kimi K3.1, MiniMax 3.1 Pro and Qwen M4.
There has been talk that China’s AI labs have gone silent amid increasing scrutiny of distillation by U.S. AI labs. Apparently, DeepSeek’s new model DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 release yesterday broke that silence. According to our checks, we can expect more model releases from China in the coming weeks. Most notably, Kimi K3.1 was scheduled to launch tomorrow, according to the schedule we previously learned. This model from Moonshot is worth watching. Our checks suggest its benchmark scores are likely to surpass Opus 5.5. Several other releases are slated for the end of this month. MiniMax 3.1 Pro and Qwen M4 were also scheduled to launch by month’s end, according to our checks. However, DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash’s launch yesterday may affect those timelines. DeepSeek’s aggressive “category-killer” narrative and significant price-performance advantage could affect Kimi K3.1’s release timing.
This post quotes another post: x.com/deepseek_ai/status/2111375640717033777