This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology.

Three reasons why DeepSeek’s new model matters

On Friday, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview of V4, its long-awaited new flagship model. Notably, the model can process much longer prompts than its last generation, thanks to a new design that handles large amounts of text more efficiently.

While the model remains open source, its performance matches leading closed-source rivals from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. It is also DeepSeek’s first release optimized Huawei’s Ascend chips—a key test of China’s dependence on Nvidia.

Here are three ways V4 could shake up AI.

—Caiwei Chen

The rise of world models

AI systems have already gained impressive mastery over the digital world, but the physical world remains humanity’s domain. As it turns out, building an AI that composes novels or code apps is far easier than developing one to fold laundry or navigate city streets. To bridge this gap, many researchers believe you need something called a world model.

Proponents like Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li and AMI Labs founder Yann LeCun argue these models can overcome the well-known limitations of LLMs—and realize AI’s promise for robotics. Find out why they’ve brought world models to the forefront of the field.

—Grace Huckins

World models are on our list of the 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now, our essential guide to what’s really worth your attention in the field.

Subscribers can watch an exclusive roundtable unveiling the technologies and trends on the list, with analysis from MIT Technology Review’s AI reporter Grace Huckins and executive editors Amy Nordrum and Niall Firth.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

Quote of the day

“Getting out the truth and establishing facts and reliable information takes time. But our audiences really don’t have that kind of patience.”

—Amanda Crawford, associate professor at the University of Connecticut, tells the NYT why conspiracy theories are gaining traction online.

One More Thing

MIRIAM MARTINCIC

Welcome to Kenya’s Great Carbon Valley: a bold new gamble to fight climate change

Kenya’s Great Rift Valley is home to five geothermal power stations, which harness clouds of steam to generate about a quarter of the country’s electricity. But some of the energy escapes into the atmosphere, while even more remains underground for lack of demand. That’s what brought Octavia Carbon here.

Last year, the startup began harnessing some of that excess energy to remove CO2 from the air. The company says the method is efficient, affordable, and—crucially—scalable. But the project also faces fierce opposition.