On top of what was already said, o3-mini and Gemini 2.0 Flash are both assumed to be significantly smaller models than R1; they are, however, highly optimized for specific use cases, especially coding and logic. R1 by contrast is more of a generalist model like O1 or Claude Sonnet. This is why R1 is much better at creative writing, for example, but it comes at the cost of model size and inference speed.
Google, Open AI, and Anthropic are the top Western AI companies, and despite all the jokes we're making, the reality is that they will remain tough competition for China in global AI dominance due to their vast financial resources and access to top end GPUs. A battle was won, but the war is just getting started.
