DeepSeek and Moonshot used GPT-6 Astra outputs in training, as reported by Reuters

Reuters, in a report carried by U.S. News with a timestamp of 28 October 2026 at 10:10 p.m. and no time zone, said Chinese developers DeepSeek and Moonshot AI relied heavily on outputs from OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model to train their latest models. Reuters said The Information reported that on Wednesday, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. Reuters called the practice distillation. It said The Information said Moonshot's Kimi K3.1 Pro, which was released last week, and DeepSeek's upgraded V4.1-Flash 1017 model, launched on 17 October, benefited from distilling Astra.

Reuters said OpenAI, DeepSeek and Moonshot AI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It also said that, in a 30 September blog post, OpenAI said it had linked a core part of a distillation campaign that began in July to individuals associated with Moonshot AI. Reuters said Anthropic has said that new measures designed to prevent rivals from copying Claude's capabilities have reduced data harvested in distillation attacks by about 90% to 99%. That sentence is Reuters' account of an earlier Anthropic statement, not a new figure from DeepSeek or Moonshot.

What it means for business: the claim is The Information's, as reported by Reuters, and the three companies had not commented in the story. It is not a finding by a regulator. Teams using Kimi K3.1 Pro or DeepSeek V4.1-Flash may want to treat the training-data claim as unconfirmed until one of the companies or a primary document addresses it.