Can DeepSeek challenge OpenAI, Anthropic in AI agents as Harness adoption takes off?

DeepSeek's Harness artificial intelligence agent framework has rapidly gained traction, boasting 1.54 million daily active users in under three months since its August 13 launch, according to the Chinese AI company. Harness, a software infrastructure that transforms large language models into autonomous AI agents, has seen daily users consume approximately 92 trillion tokens as of November 4, or roughly 1.1 billion tokens per second.

US counterparts OpenAI and Anthropic, having established early lead in harness development, have capitalized on this to power their top-tier coding products, Codex and Claude Code. Harness debuted with a web application in September, enabling developers to deploy AI agents capable of executing code and interacting with external software for various tasks.

As of now, Harness's developer community has grown to around 35,000 third-party plug-ins, with approximately 60% of active users having incorporated at least one plug-in into their experience. Company representative Cui Tianyi likened Harness to an operating system akin to a smartphone, offering core functionalities while providing a platform for third-party integration akin to smartphone app customization.

Examples of developed plug-ins include tools for academic paper analysis and development tracking. DeepSeek plans to establish a marketplace for developers to publish and users to discover these plug-ins, offering token grants and technical support to encourage growth. The company is increasingly focusing on monetizing its foundation models, recently establishing its first product division led by Cui.