Chinese AI giant DeepSeek released its latest model at a steep discount, as the country’s tech price war grows fiercer.
The open-weight V4-Flash has enhanced agent capabilities — although it still trails the leading Chinese model, Moonshot’s Kimi K3.
A 50% cut in token costs, and a pause on bringing in a previously announced dynamic-pricing mechanism that would have doubled costs during peak hours, suggests DeepSeek is competing for market share.
Beijing, a significant investor in the company, has warned tech firms against “involution” — a race to the bottom that has already driven solar and EV prices way down. But it also subsidizes the industry’s compute and energy purchases, which experts say drives involution by keeping unprofitable companies solvent.