Capacity reports DeepSeek is preparing to launch a new flagship model (V4), expected to be multimodal, while facing renewed scrutiny over claims that Chinese labs have been distilling frontier US models at scale. The strongest original sourcing for the “industrial-scale distillation” allegation is Anthropic’s own public post, which names DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax and provides volumes, tactics, and attribution methods.

V4 timing and positioning (reported): Capacity says DeepSeek’s V4 launch is expected within days and timed around China’s “Two Sessions,” and that V4 is expected to be multimodal (text plus images/video).

Distillation accusation (primary): Anthropic says it identified industrial-scale campaigns by DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax to illicitly extract Claude capabilities, totaling 16M+ exchanges via about 24,000 fraudulent accounts.

What Anthropic says DeepSeek targeted: reasoning tasks, rubric-based grading (reward-model style), and producing “censorship-safe alternatives,” including attempts to elicit chain-of-thought style reasoning at scale.

OpenAI security angle (secondary): Capacity cites a Financial Times report that OpenAI tightened internal security following DeepSeek “copy” claims (information tenting, offline machines, stricter network rules, etc.).

Chipmaker pre-briefing claim (reported, not primary): Reuters is cited (but was blocked to fetch) for the claim DeepSeek withheld prerelease access from Nvidia/AMD while giving earlier access to domestic suppliers like Huawei.



*Sources:* 

Anthropic ([statement with details](https://www.anthropic.com/news/detecting-and-preventing-distillation-attacks)) 

Capacity ([DeepSeek V4 + allegation recap](https://capacityglobal.com/news/deepseek-v4-launch-ai-copying-allegations/))

DeepSeek reportedly readies “V4” launch amid US lab accusations of illicit distillation, as Anthropic details “industrial-scale” Claude extraction campaigns