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Chinese tech company Alibaba on Wednesday released a new version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model that it claimed surpassed the highly-acclaimed DeepSeek-V3. The unusual timing of the Qwen 2.5-Max’s release, on the first day of the Lunar New Year when most Chinese people are off work and with their families, points to the pressure Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on not just overseas rivals, but also its domestic competition. “Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms almost across the board GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and Llama-3.1-405B,” Alibaba’s cloud unit said in an announcement posted on its official WeChat account, referring to OpenAI and Meta’s most advanced open-source AI models. The Jan. 10 release of DeepSeek’s AI assistant, powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, as well as the Jan. 20 release of its R1 model, has shocked Silicon Valley and caused tech shares to plunge, with the Chinese startup’s purportedly low development and usage costs prompting investors to question huge spending plans by leading AI firms in the United States. But DeepSeek’s success has also led to a scramble among its domestic competitors to upgrade their own AI models. Two days after the release of DeepSeek-R1, TikTok owner ByteDance released an update to its flagship AI model, which it claimed outperformed Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s o1 in AIME, a benchmark test that measures how well AI models understand and respond to complex instructions. This echoed DeepSeek’s claim that its R1 model rivalled OpenAI’s o1 on several performance benchmarks. DeepSeek versus domestic competitors The predecessor of DeepSeek’s V3 model, DeepSeek-V2, triggered an AI model price war in China after it was released last May. The fact that DeepSeek-V2 was open-source and unprecedentedly cheap, only 1 yuan ($0.14) per 1 million tokens – or units of data processed by the AI model – led to Alibaba’s cloud unit announcing price cuts of up to 97% on a range of models. Other Chinese tech companies followed suit, including Baidu, which released China’s first equivalent to ChatGPT in March 2023, and the country’s most valuable internet company Tencent. Liang Wenfeng, DeepSeek’s enigmatic founder, said in a rare interview with Chinese media outlet Waves in July that the startup “did not care” about price wars and that achieving AGI (artificial general intelligence) was its main goal. OpenAI defines AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks. While large Chinese tech companies like Alibaba have hundreds of thousands of employees, DeepSeek operates like a research lab, staffed mainly by young graduates and doctorate students from top Chinese universities. Liang said in his July interview that he believed China’s largest tech companies might not be well suited to the future of the AI industry, contrasting their high costs and top-down structures with DeepSeek’s lean operation and loose management style. “Large foundational models require continued innovation, tech giants’ capabilities have their limits,” he said. Eduardo Baptista, Reuters
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Trump Media (NASDAQ: DJT) stock jumped more than 10% in morning trading on Wednesday on news it was expanding into financial services, launching Truth.Fi, which will include Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and separately managed accounts, among other traditional investment vehicles. Brokerage firm Charles Schwab will manage the funds, which are launching with an initial investment of up to $250 million. Charles Schwab told Fast Company as a matter of policy, it “[does] not comment on any current or former client activities.” Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. (TMTG) is the parent company of the social media platform Truth Social and the video streaming platform Truth+, which President Donald Trump holds a majority stake in. The company anticipates that Truth.Fi products and services, including multiple investment vehicles, will be rolled out in 2025. Truth.Fi is a natural expansion of the Truth Social movement,” CEO and chairman Devin Nunes said in a statement. “We began by creating a free-speech social media platform, added an ultra-fast TV streaming service, and now were moving into investment products and decentralized finance.” “Developing American First investment vehicles is another step toward our goal of creating a robust ecosystem through which American patriots can protect themselves from the ever-present threat of cancellation, censorship, debanking, and privacy violations committed by Big Tech and woke corporations,” Nunes added. The news comes on the heels of President Trump’s multibillion-dollar meme coin, which debuted shortly before he was sworn in for his second term; a new executive order promoting crypto; and the election of several “pro-crypto” lawmakers to Congressall of which have fueled a surge in the price of crypto, specifically of Bitcoin, as well as concerns about the president’s conflicts of interest as he pursues his own personal business interests while in office. Meanwhile, Trump Media’s streaming platform Truth+ reported a $19 million loss in the third quarter due to legal fees and costs tied to that streaming deal, according to Reuters. On Tuesday, Trump advisor and ally Elon Musk announced his social media platform X would be moving into financial services, partnering with Visa on a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment service that would enable users to move funds between their bank accounts and a digital wallet in real time, similar to Venmo or Zelle.
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E-Commerce
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has classified a recall of Frito-Lay potato chips at the highest level of risk. The newly announced classification means that under certain conditions, those who consume the chips are at risk of experiencing serious adverse health consequences or even death. Heres what you need to know about the Frito-Lay potato chips recall. Whats happened? On December 16, 2024, Frito-Lay issued a voluntary limited recall on select packages of some of its Lay’s Classic Potato Chips. The recall was first published on the FDAs website two days later. But this week, the FDA said in its enforcement database that it has classified the recall as a “Class 1.” An FDA spokesperson confirmed the classification with Fast Company. What is a Class 1 FDA recall? The FDA has three classifications into which the agency slots recalls based on potential hazards and risks to the public. A Class III recall is the least serious. According to the FDA, this type of recalled product is not likely to cause adverse health consequences.” A Class II recall is a little more concerning, but the use of or interaction with the product is unlikely to cause lasting harm. As the FDA notes, exposure to the product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote.” A Class I recall is the most serious. It means the use of or exposure to the product has a reasonable probability of causing serious adverse health consequences or death,” according to the FDA. Class 1 is the status the recalled Frito-Lay potato chips now fall under. Why is the Frito-Lay potato chips recall a Class 1 recall? The Frito-Lay potato chip recall is classified as a Class 1 recall because the chips may contain undeclared milk. For those with milk allergies, this can represent a significant risk to healthup to and including death. According to the Mayo Clinic, a milk allergy is one of the most common food allergies among children. What Frito-Lay potato chips are part of the recall? According to Frito-Lays recall notice posted on December 16 and the FDA notice posted on December 18, only one product is being recalled: Lays Classic Potato Chips with the following characteristics: Size: 13 oz. (368.5 grams) UPC: 28400 31041 Guaranteed Fresh date: 11 FEB 2025 Manufacturing Code: 6462307xx or 6463307xx The FDA notice states that the chips must have the guaranteed fresh date above plus one of the two manufacturing codes to be included in the recall. According to the FDA, more than 6,300 bags of chips were impacted. An image of the recalled product can be seen here. Where and when were the recalled Frito Lay potato chips sold? The recalled chips were distributed in Oregon and Washington to certain retail stores and e-commerce distributors, according to the FDA notice. The notice does not state which online retailers and retail stores received the distributed chips. The recalled chips were sold as early as November 3, 2024, and the first recall notice was not published until December 16. That means people had plenty of time to stock up on the chips before the holidays. Further, since the recalled chips have a guaranteed fresh date of February 11, 2025, many people could still have the recalled chips in their possession. What should I do if I have the recalled chips? Be sure to read the full recall notice here. The recall notice warns, “Those with an allergy or severe sensitivity to milk run the risk of a serious or life-threatening allergic reaction if they consume the recalled product.” According to the notice, if you have a sensitivity or allergy to milk, you should not consume the recalled chips and dispose of them immediately. Those with further questions about the recall can contact Frito-Lay Consumer Relations at 1-800-352-4477 between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. CST, Monday through Friday.
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