Mystery AI model suspected to be DeepSeek V4 is revealed to be from Xiaomi

A powerful artificial intelligence model that appeared anonymously on a developer platform last week was revealed to be from Chinese smartphone and electric vehicle giant Xiaomi, and not DeepSeek as initially thought. BEIJING - A powerful artificial intelligence model that appeared anonymously on a developer platform last week was revealed on Wednesday to be from Chinese smartphone and electric vehicle giant Xiaomi, after it fueled speculation that startup DeepSeek was quietly testing its next-generation system ahead of a launch. The release of DeepSeek's low-cost models DeepSeek-V3 and R1 triggered a global tech stock selloff last year, causing investors to question whether U.S. AI firms needed to spend billions of dollars on AI computing power. Since then, there has been a great deal of interest in DeepSeek-V4, a next-generation model that has yet to be released. The mysterious free model, called Hunter Alpha, surfaced on the AI gateway platform OpenRouter on March 11 without any developer attribution and was later described by the platform as a "stealth model." In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.