DeepSeek and Qwen AI models crush Western rivals in cryptocurrency trading challenge

DeepSeek’s Chat V3.1 model grew its initial capital of US$10,000 to US$22,500 by 4pm on Monday – a 125 per cent gain since trading began on October 18 – according to the latest update from Alpha Arena, a crypto investment project launched by US research firm Nof1.

Qwen 3 Max, developed by Alibaba Group Holding, followed with a 95 per cent gain, doubling its account value to US$19,600. Qwen briefly exceeded 100 per cent returns on Monday morning and overtook DeepSeek between October 24 and 26 before ceding its lead. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

By contrast, OpenAI’s GPT-5 was the worst performer so far, losing nearly 60 per cent of its capital with about US$4,000 remaining. Google DeepMind’s Gemini 2.5 Pro showed a similar 57 per cent loss, while xAI’s Grok 4 and Anthropic’s Claude 4.5 Sonnet posted returns of 13 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.

The competition, which runs until November 3, tests the investment abilities of six AI models, each given US$10,000 in starting capital along with identical prompts and market data.

Their task is to maximise returns by trading cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, ether and dogecoin, according to Nof1.