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Dr. Hernani Costa
Dr. Hernani Costa

Posted on • Originally published at Medium

Skywork AI Deep Research: Enterprise-Grade Alternative to ChatGPT

Skywork AI's Deep Research Revolution: Why Enterprise Leaders Are Ditching ChatGPT for Professional-Grade AI

Skywork AI has made significant strides in the AI research landscape by achieving the #1 ranking on GAIA benchmarks with 82.42% accuracy, outperforming competitors like Manus and securing the top position globally. The platform offers professional-grade document generation with verifiable sources, dynamic visualizations, and consulting-level output quality — while delivering these capabilities at 60% lower cost than OpenAI's Deep Research tool.

In May 2025, Skywork AI, based in Singapore, introduced its groundbreaking "Super Agents" platform, generating significant buzz in enterprise AI and transforming how professionals handle research-focused tasks. Unlike traditional AI tools that prioritize speed over substance, Skywork's DeepResearch technology performs searches up to 10 times deeper than standard methods, delivering consulting-grade outputs with complete source traceability.

I'm Dr. Hernani Costa, founder of First AI Movers, where I help executives navigate AI transformation through daily insights reaching 4000+ professionals and strategic consulting with dozens of companies. Through extensive testing of emerging AI platforms and deep analysis of enterprise adoption patterns, I've witnessed firsthand how Skywork moves us from "good enough" AI to genuinely professional-grade intelligence.

After analysing and reviewing benchmarks against competitors like Manus and Genspark, the results reveal why forward-thinking professionals are migrating to platforms that prioritize depth over superficial responses. This article will demonstrate how Skywork's unique approach to AI research is improving professional workflows, establishing clear performance advantages, and providing actionable guidance for enterprise leaders considering their next AI investment.

Get ready to discover why the future of professional AI isn't about faster responses — it's about deeper, verifiable intelligence that stands up to scrutiny.

What Makes Skywork Different: Beyond the AI Research Hype

The AI research tool market exploded in 2024 with platforms promising instant answers and lightning-fast content generation. Yet most enterprise leaders quickly discovered a frustrating reality: speed without substance creates more problems than solutions. Generic responses, unverifiable claims, and shallow analysis led to costly errors and diminished trust in AI-powered insights.

Skywork AI emerged with a fundamentally different philosophy: depth over speed, verification over volume. Launched globally in May 2025, this Singapore-based company didn't just build another chatbot — they engineered what they call "consulting-grade AI" specifically designed for professional environments where accuracy matters.

The platform centers around five specialized "Super Agents" — Documents, Slides, Sheets, Webpages, and Podcasts — each purpose-built for specific professional tasks rather than generic text generation. This isn't the typical "jack of all trades, master of none" approach. Instead, Skywork delivers focused intelligence that aligns with real-world business workflows.

My Take: Having tested dozens of AI platforms for myself and clients, I can confidently say most tools optimize for demo-friendly features rather than practical professional use. Skywork's agent-specific approach mirrors how successful businesses actually organize work — specialized teams tackling focused objectives.

The DeepResearch Engine: 10x Deeper Than Standard AI

At Skywork's core lies DeepResearch technology, which the company positions as its primary competitive advantage. Unlike typical RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems that skim surface-level information, DeepResearch analyzes up to 65 sources per query, diving significantly deeper into available data to uncover patterns, connections, and insights that surface-level searches miss.

This approach directly addresses a critical enterprise pain point: the hallucination problem. While traditional AI tools often generate plausible-sounding but factually incorrect information, Skywork's DeepResearch traces every statistic, fact, and claim back to specific source passages. Users can click through to verify original materials, creating an audit trail that meets professional standards.

The benchmark results speak volumes about this approach's effectiveness. Skywork achieved the #1 position on GAIA (General AI Assistant) benchmarks with 82.42% accuracy, surpassing OpenAI's Deep Research and significantly outperforming competitors like Manus (86.5%) and Genspark. These aren't marketing metrics — GAIA represents one of the most challenging AI reasoning benchmarks, designed by researchers to test real-world problem-solving capabilities.

Performance comparisons reveal stark differences in output quality. When tasked with creating market analysis reports, Skywork generated comprehensive documents with embedded charts, verified statistics, and clear source attribution. Competitors delivered basic text summaries with minimal visual elements and questionable fact verification.

Speed remains competitive despite the depth. Testing showed Skywork completing complex research tasks 2–3x faster than Manus and Genspark while maintaining superior accuracy levels. This challenges the common assumption that thoroughness requires sacrificing efficiency.

Professional-Grade Output: Beyond Generic AI Responses

The quality gap between Skywork and its competitors becomes immediately apparent when examining actual outputs. Traditional AI research tools typically generate text-heavy documents that resemble rough drafts requiring extensive editing and fact-checking. Skywork produces what industry observers describe as "presentation-ready" materials.

Document generation showcases this difference most clearly. Skywork's Documents Agent doesn't just write — it researches, structures, and visualizes information automatically. Charts, graphs, and infographics appear dynamically based on discovered data, creating materials that rival professional consulting firm outputs. Every visual element remains fully editable, allowing users to customize without having to start from scratch.

The Slides Agent demonstrates similar sophistication. Rather than basic bullet-point presentations, it generates visually engaging decks with dynamic layouts, integrated videos, and export compatibility with PowerPoint, Google Slides, and PDF formats. Users report creating professional presentations in 6–8 minutes compared to traditional 2–3 hour workflows.

Competitive analysis reveals significant quality disparities. Testing the same market research prompt across platforms showed:

  • Skywork: Professional formatting with 15+ embedded visualizations, complete source citations, and ready-to-present structure
  • Manus: Basic document with overlapping text elements, limited sourcing, excessive white space issues
  • Genspark: Decent content structure but minimal visual elements and generic "next steps" sections

Cost efficiency adds another competitive advantage. Skywork operates on a credit system requiring fewer credits per project compared to competitors, delivering premium performance at lower operational costs. The platform currently offers 500 signup credits.

Enterprise Applications: Real-World Implementation Success

Forward-thinking organizations across finance, consulting, and education sectors have begun integrating Skywork into core workflows, reporting measurable productivity gains and quality improvements. The platform's enterprise focus becomes evident through features designed for professional environments rather than casual users.

Financial Services Implementation: Investment firms utilize Skywork's research capabilities for market analysis, generating comprehensive reports with real-time data integration and regulatory-compliant documentation. The platform's source verification features address compliance requirements while reducing research time from days to hours.

Consulting Firm Adoption: Professional services organizations leverage Skywork's presentation capabilities for client deliverables. The ability to generate consulting-grade decks with embedded analytics and visual storytelling has streamlined proposal development and strategy communication.

Academic and Research Applications: Universities and research institutions employ Skywork for literature reviews, grant proposals, and academic publications. The platform's deep sourcing capabilities and citation management align with scholarly standards while accelerating research workflows.

Integration capabilities support enterprise workflows through APIs and plugin ecosystems. The Model Control Protocols (MCPs) architecture allows customization and extension, enabling organizations to build specialized applications on Skywork's foundation.

My Take: Enterprise AI adoption follows a predictable pattern — initial enthusiasm followed by reality checks about quality and reliability. Skywork appears to have learned from early market failures by prioritizing professional use cases from launch rather than retrofitting consumer tools for business use.

Competitive Landscape: How Skywork Stacks Against Alternatives

The AI research platform market has consolidated around several key players, each with distinct strengths and limitations. Comprehensive testing reveals how Skywork positions against primary competitors:

  • Skywork vs. Manus: Manus offers solid research capabilities but struggles with visual presentation quality and credit efficiency. Side-by-side testing showed Manus requiring roughly double the processing time for equivalent tasks while producing less polished outputs with formatting issues. Skywork's superior benchmark performance (82.42% vs 86.5% GAIA scores) translates into noticeably better real-world results.
  • Skywork vs. Genspark: Genspark delivers structured, professional-tone outputs but lacks Skywork's visual sophistication and depth of research. While Genspark excels at crisp, formal content, it cannot match Skywork's dynamic visualization capabilities or open-source flexibility. Genspark's higher monthly pricing ($24.99 vs Skywork's credit system) makes it less cost-effective for variable usage patterns.
  • Skywork vs. Traditional Tools: Compared to conventional research methods or basic AI assistants, Skywork demonstrates dramatic efficiency gains. Tasks requiring 8+ hours of manual research and formatting are completed within 8–10 minutes while maintaining professional quality standards.

The competitive analysis reveals Skywork's unique positioning: high-quality output at enterprise scale with cost efficiency. While competitors optimize for either speed or quality, Skywork achieves both through its specialized agent architecture and DeepResearch technology.

Market trajectory suggests increasing enterprise demand for verifiable, professional-grade AI outputs rather than generic text generation. Skywork's early focus on this segment positions them advantageously as organizations mature their AI strategies beyond experimental phases.

Technical Innovation: The R1V2 Multimodal Breakthrough

Skywork's technical capabilities extend beyond their platform interface through groundbreaking research in multimodal AI reasoning. The company's R1V2 model represents a significant advancement in open-source AI, achieving benchmark-leading performance across multiple evaluation frameworks.

The R1V2 model introduces hybrid reinforcement learning combining Mixed Preference Optimization (MPO) with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), addressing longstanding challenges in balancing sophisticated reasoning with broad generalization. This technical innovation directly benefits platform users through improved accuracy and reduced hallucination rates.

Benchmark achievements demonstrate R1V2's capabilities:

  • OlympiadBench: 62.6% accuracy
  • AIME2024: 78.9% performance
  • LiveCodeBench: 63.6% score
  • MMMU: 73.6% rating

These results establish new open-source baselines while substantially reducing performance gaps with proprietary systems such as Gemini 2.5 and OpenAI's models. For enterprise users, this translates into access to cutting-edge AI capabilities without vendor lock-in or exorbitant licensing costs.

The Selective Sample Buffer (SSB) mechanism addresses a critical training challenge known as "vanishing advantages" in reinforcement learning, maintaining consistent high-quality outputs even as models scale. This technical sophistication ensures reliable performance across diverse professional applications.

Open-source commitment differentiates Skywork from competitors. The company has publicly released model weights and framework code through GitHub, enabling customization and transparency that enterprise clients increasingly demand. This approach builds trust while fostering developer ecosystem growth.

Bringing It All Together: The Strategic Advantage of Deep Research AI

The emergence of Skywork AI represents more than another tool launch — it signals a fundamental move towards a professional-grade AI that prioritizes substance over speed. Organizations that recognize this transition early gain significant competitive advantages through improved decision-making, enhanced client deliverables, and streamlined knowledge work.

The current AI landscape rewards depth over volume. While competitors race to generate faster responses, Skywork focuses on generating better responses with verifiable accuracy and professional presentation quality. This approach aligns with enterprise needs for reliable, audit-worthy outputs that support critical business decisions.

Implementation urgency stems from the platform's rapid improvement trajectory. With benchmark-leading performance and aggressive feature development, early adopters benefit from established expertise while competitors struggle with inferior tools. The 60% cost advantage over alternatives makes experimentation low-risk with high potential returns.

Strategic positioning requires viewing AI research tools as competitive differentiators rather than commodity utilities. Organizations using Skywork can deliver higher-quality client presentations, more thorough market analyses, and better-researched strategic recommendations — creating sustainable advantages in knowledge-intensive industries.

The technical foundation — including open-source models, transparent methodologies, and enterprise-focused architecture — suggests Skywork's advantages will compound over time rather than diminish. This positions early adopters favorably as the AI research market matures.

Final Thoughts

Skywork AI's rise to #1 on GAIA benchmarks while delivering practical enterprise value demonstrates that the AI research landscape has reached an inflection point. The choice between superficial speed and professional depth will define competitive positioning across knowledge-intensive industries.

Organizations still relying on traditional research methods or basic AI tools face increasing disadvantage as competitors leverage professional-grade intelligence. Skywork's combination of benchmark-leading accuracy, cost efficiency, and enterprise-focused design creates compelling adoption incentives for forward-thinking leaders.

Want to stay ahead of AI trends that matter to your business? Join 4000+ executives reading First AI Movers Daily Newsletter. Every day, I break down the AI developments that will actually impact your industry — no fluff, just actionable insights.


Written by Dr. Hernani Costa and originally published at First AI Movers. Subscribe to the First AI Movers Newsletter for daily, no‑fluff AI business insights and practical automation playbooks for EU SME leaders. First AI Movers is part of Core Ventures.

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