DeepSeek signals ‘significant’ price hike amid surge in demand for low-cost AI models

Plans for a major price hike underscore the challenges the company faces to maintain aggressively low prices amid fierce competition DeepSeek announced on Thursday a “significant” price hike, amid surging global demand for a new ultra-cheap model, which sparked debate over how the Chinese artificial intelligence start-up has delivered powerful performance at rock-bottom prices. Overall pricing for its application programming interface (API) services would be raised “in the near future”, with specific plans to be advised later, the Hangzhou-based company said in a statement on its developer platform on Thursday. A “significant increase” was expected, and users should plan their usage accordingly, DeepSeek added. The notice came a week after the release of its latest model DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731, a 284-billion-parameter lightweight version of the V4 series previewed in April. The company’s plans for a major price hike underscore the challenges the Chinese start-up faces to maintain its aggressively low prices amid fierce competition, potentially clouding its reputation for being a champion for cost-effective AI.

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