DeepSeek slashes fees for new AI model in Chinese price war

BEIJING – DeepSeek is aggressively pitching low-priced-plans for its just-released flagship model, intensifying competition across a Chinese artificial intelligence industry trying to take on Silicon Valley’s best.

The Hangzhou-headquartered AI laboratory is offering a 75 per cent discount to developers using the DeepSeek V4 Pro, released last week after months of anticipation.

It is also reducing fees for input cache hits across its family of AI platforms to a tenth of their original pricing, dramatically lowering costs for frequent users sending similar or repeated requests.

The move threatens to reignite a price-based war that erupted after DeepSeek upended the industry with the R1 in 2025.

Its latest promotion comes at a time when OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet’s Google are rapidly pushing new releases – but access to those can be expensive.

Chinese AI companies are discounting to incentivise users to switch, accelerating adoption in a crowded global AI field in an attempt to reshape the US-China AI race. DeepSeek is hoping pricing, accessibility and sophisticated features will differentiate its models for next-generation developers and enterprise users.

DeepSeek V4’s context window – the maximum amount of data a model can consider at once – is significant as it enables the processing of complex code bases and long documents.

The model allows easy integration of Claude Code, OpenClaw and OpenCode, making it easier to work within the broader AI ecosystem.

“The pricing, open source availability and one million context window features all lower barriers for developers, start-ups and small enterprises,” said Mr Akshar Keremane, co-founder of Bangalore-based AI start-up O-Health.

“It allows users to experiment at a model capability and scale that wasn’t available earlier,” said the entrepreneur, whose Gates Foundation-backed start-up deploys AI that runs in large hospitals as well as rural clinics. BLOOMBERG