Two of the biggest names in AI have dropped new models within 24 hours of each other. OpenAI rolled out a full release of GPT‑5.5 on Thursday 23rd April, while Chinese disruptor DeepSeek unveiled a preview version of its new V4 model the next day.
The US-based OpenAI has become a giant in a short space of time. Although it began as a nonprofit more than a decade ago, the company has surged in the three and a half years since the large language model (LLM) ChatGPT was first released. As of the end of 2025, its offerings had a reported 800 million weekly active users and estimated revenues of more than $15bn.
DeepSeek came seemingly out of nowhere last year to make a big splash in the global AI scene. By the end of 2025, it had a reported 130 million active users. This was still considerably less than ChatGPT, but DeepSeek offered close to industry-leading quality while being developed – at least according to claims from China and DeepSeek itself – at a fraction of the cost of comparable Western models.
OpenAI and DeepSeek both claim significant improvements
OpenAI says that GPT-5.5 is its “smartest and most intuitive to use model” yet and that it was designed to be used across a wide range of areas. In a release statement, the company listed a number of use cases, including writing and debugging code, researching online, analysing data, creating documents and spreadsheets, operating software, and moving across tools until a task is finished. In a call with journalists, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman described it as a step towards the company’s vision of a “super app”.
DeepSeek also promised major upgrades in its system’s agentic capabilities – the ability for an AI to act relatively autonomously and achieve multi-step goals using a broad range of skills, rather than excelling in a single area.
Like DeepSeek’s earlier models, V4 remains open source, making it free for anyone to use. GPT-5.5, by contrast, is initially rolling out to paying Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users. The associated GPT-5.5 Pro will be available to Pro, Business, and Enterprise users. Another important development is that DeepSeek V4 is tailored for Huawei chip technology, signalling China’s growing autonomy in AI hardware. Huawei announced that some of its chips had been used in training the new model.
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