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Last Week in AI

OpenAI Takes the Lead Again, Mistral & Alibaba Make Moves

Ellis Crosby
Ellis Crosby
AI Expert & Incremento AI Lead
OpenAI Takes the Lead Again, Mistral & Alibaba Make Moves

It was a big week in AI, with OpenAI pushing out two major releases that will help businesses move faster on coding and research tasks. Meanwhile, Alibaba and Mistral also made interesting moves, showing just how quickly AI development is progressing in 2025. Here’s what you need to know.

OpenAI o3-mini: A Big Step Forward in Reasoning

OpenAI launched o3-mini, its newest reasoning-focused model that balances high performance with cost-efficiency. It’s already available in both ChatGPT and the API, replacing o1-mini and offering better speed, accuracy, and STEM capabilities.

Why It Matters

  • Better coding & STEM performance: Outperforms its predecessor in math, coding, and science, making it an excellent choice for technical professionals.

  • Adjustable reasoning levels: Developers can choose between low, medium, and high reasoning effort, allowing optimization for speed or depth.

  • Higher rate limits: ChatGPT Plus and Team users now get 150 messages per day, up from 50.

  • First free-access reasoning model: Even free ChatGPT users can try o3-mini via the ‘Reason’ option in the message composer.

Who Should Care?

If you rely on AI for coding, engineering, or complex problem-solving, upgrading to ChatGPT Pro for a higher o3-mini allowance makes sense. The model is designed to deliver strong logical reasoning and precise answers faster than before, which means developers and businesses can move quicker without sacrificing quality.

Deep Research: OpenAI’s AI-Powered Research Assistant

Alongside o3-mini, OpenAI also dropped Deep Research, a new research agent that independently searches, analyzes, and synthesizes information from the web.

What Makes It Special?

  • Multi-step research: Instead of just generating text responses, Deep Research actively browses the internet, pulling in relevant sources and summarizing them.

  • High-level analysis: This is the closest thing yet to having an AI research analyst, capable of handling finance, policy, science, and competitive analysis.

  • Citations and summaries: Every output includes clear documentation of sources, making it easier to verify information.

  • Long-form research reports: It takes between 5 to 30 minutes to complete tasks, giving you a well-researched answer while you focus on other work.

Who Should Use It?

If your business involves market research, competitive analysis, or technical deep dives, Deep Research could be a game-changer. ChatGPT Pro users can try it now, with Plus and Team users getting access next.

Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5-Max & Qwen 2.5-VL: A New Contender?

Alibaba is not sitting still in the AI race. They just launched Qwen 2.5-Max, a model they claim outperforms DeepSeek-V3, GPT-4o, and Llama 3.1 405B in general AI tasks.

Meanwhile, Qwen 2.5-VL is a vision/multimodal model with impressive video and document analysis capabilities.

Why It Stands Out

  • Qwen 2.5-Max: A strong all-around model that excels at coding, chat tasks, and reasoning.

  • Qwen 2.5-VL: A vision model with long-video comprehension and structured document analysis—useful for businesses dealing with visual data processing.

Should You Pay Attention?

For most businesses, OpenAI still holds the advantage, but Qwen models are worth keeping an eye on, especially if you need vision-based AI for tasks like video analysis, document processing, or UI automation.

Mistral Small 3: The Fast, Cheap, Open-Source Option

Mistral finally broke their silence with Mistral Small 3, a 24B-parameter model designed to be fast, efficient, and cost-effective.

What’s the Selling Point?

  • Faster and cheaper than GPT-4o-mini while maintaining competitive performance.

  • Ideal for chatbots, function calling, and high-volume free apps.

  • Open-source and lightweight enough to run locally, even on an RTX 4090 or a MacBook with 32GB RAM.

Who Should Consider It?

If you need a small, local-friendly AI model for chatbots, real-time apps, or embedded AI tasks, Mistral Small 3 is worth testing.

Conclusion: OpenAI Dominates, but the Race Is Heating Up

The key takeaway from this week? OpenAI still leads the pack, but competition is heating up.

  • If you rely on AI for coding, reasoning, or research, upgrading to ChatGPT Pro for o3-mini and Deep Research could be a smart move.

  • Qwen’s models are getting better, and while they’re not a must-have yet, they could shake up the market soon.

  • Mistral’s open-source approach means cheaper and faster options are available, making it a great choice for startups and cost-sensitive projects.

At Incremento, we keep an eye on these developments to help businesses make the most of AI. If you need guidance on integrating AI into your business—whether it’s for MVP development, AI automation, or just brainstorming the right approach—we’re here to help.

🚀 Let’s talk AI—because the future isn’t waiting.