Microsoft has announced NPU-optimized versions of DeepSeek-R1 for Copilot+, starting with Qualcomm Snapdragon X. This will be followed by the Intel Core Ultra 200V and others.
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen1.5B will be available in the AI toolkit, with the 7B and 14B variants to follow.
DeepSeek’s model offers similar functionality to contenders like OpenAI, but computes around 11 times more efficiently. Microsoft claims its impact on battery life will be ‘minimal’.