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DeepSeek ships V4-Pro and raises its prices

DeepSeek ships V4-Pro and raises its prices

New Capabilities

The Chinese AI lab that undercut the market now moves to monetize its flagship model

In 2 days: Price increase takes effect

Overview

Eighteen months ago DeepSeek's cheap AI wiped roughly $589 billion off Nvidia's market value in a single day. On August 13, 2026, the same company took its flagship model out of preview and, three days later, made it cost about four times more.

DeepSeek-V4-Pro is built for 'agent' work: running code and using software tools across many steps with little human input. The price increase, effective August 16, is the first clear sign the lab wants to earn money from its models rather than just win users with low prices.

Why it matters

DeepSeek's low prices forced rivals to respond once. If it can raise prices and keep users, the whole AI cost war changes.

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Key Indicators

1M tokens
Context window
How much text the model can read at once, roughly a long novel and then some.
~$3.96/M
Peak-hour price after increase
Cost per million tokens during peak hours once the August 16 increase takes effect.
~4x
Peak-hour cost jump
Rough increase in peak-hour costs from the model's preview pricing.
~4 months
Time in preview
How long V4-Pro ran in preview before general release.

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People Involved

Organizations Involved

Timeline

July 2023 August 2026

5 events Latest: In 2 days
Tap a bar to jump to that date
  1. Price increase takes effect

    Latest Pricing

    New V4 rates raise peak-hour costs roughly fourfold, to about $3.96 per million tokens, with steeper jumps for some token types.

  2. V4-Pro leaves preview

    Product

    DeepSeek makes V4-Pro (build 0813) generally available across its app, website and API, stressing agent tasks and a 1-million-token context window.

  3. US tech stocks plunge

    Market

    Nvidia falls about 17% and loses roughly $589 billion in market value as investors reassess AI spending.

  4. R1 model released

    Product

    DeepSeek releases its R1 reasoning model as open weights, matching top US systems at far lower reported cost.

  5. DeepSeek founded

    Origin

    Liang Wenfeng starts DeepSeek, backed by his hedge fund High-Flyer, to build large language models.

Historical Context

3 moments from history that rhyme with this story — and how they unfolded.

January 2025

DeepSeek R1 market shock (2025)

DeepSeek released its R1 reasoning model as open weights, claiming performance near top US systems at a reported training cost of a few million dollars. Investors feared AI could be built far more cheaply than assumed.

Then

On January 27, Nvidia fell about 17% and lost roughly $589 billion in market value in one day, though shares recovered part of the drop soon after.

Now

The episode made DeepSeek globally known and forced US labs and investors to defend their spending on expensive chips and training runs.

Why this matters now

It shows how much weight the market puts on DeepSeek's pricing. The V4-Pro increase reverses the very low-cost strategy that caused that shock.

May 2024

China's AI price war (2024)

Chinese tech firms including ByteDance, Alibaba and DeepSeek slashed model prices in a race for users. Some cut API costs by more than 90% within weeks.

Then

Prices for Chinese large language models fell sharply, pressuring margins across the industry.

Now

Low prices became a defining feature of China's AI market and a competitive threat to higher-priced US models.

Why this matters now

DeepSeek helped drive that price war. Raising V4-Pro prices now signals it may be stepping back from the discounting it once led.

2017-2019

Uber's shift from subsidies to profit (2017-2019)

Uber spent years offering rides below cost to win riders and drivers. After going public in 2019, it raised prices and cut incentives to chase profitability.

Then

Fares rose and some users complained, but Uber kept most of its customer base.

Now

The company eventually reached profitability, showing that a low-price disruptor can raise prices once it dominates a market.

Why this matters now

DeepSeek faces the same test: whether users who came for cheap AI will stay once prices climb.

Sources

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