This isn’t true. R1 trades blows with O1 which is the best model that OpenAI released so far - all the hype on O3 is just vaporware until we have an actual product. Most of the buzz isn’t because China made a comparable model with less, it’s because they released the weights for free.

Why would you pay $200/month to OpenAI when you can use R1 for free? Better yet, companies can now self-host it for better security and way cheaper costs. The hype is warranted.