DeepSeek’s flagship AI model update underwhelms

DeepSeek’s updated V4 Pro AI model struggles on benchmarks, shines in cybersecurity

Chinese AI start-up’s model impresses in niche areas like cybersecurity but leaves some developers disappointed in its overall capabilities

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has quietly released DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813, an updated version of its latest flagship model, leaving some developers underwhelmed by its overall capabilities and disappointed in its pricing – but impressing researchers in niche areas like cybersecurity.

However, early benchmark results suggest the new flagship is struggling to match its top-tier rivals.

DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813 scored 53 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, on par with Zhipu AI’s GLM-5.2 released in June, but was four points behind the mid-tier Terra model in OpenAI’s latest GPT-5.6 series and seven points behind Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3.

On the Vals Index, compiled by San Francisco-based Vals AI to evaluate models across several benchmarks, the new DeepSeek model ranked 12th. It trailed OpenAI’s previous-generation GPT-5.5 and also lagged well behind frontier systems like Kimi K3 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.

The model struggled in two areas in particular: completing tasks within a sandboxed terminal environment and generating complex financial models in Excel spreadsheets, Vals AI said on Wednesday.