DeepSeek Slashes V4 Pro Prices 75% to $0.87 per 1 Million Tokens

12 articles · Updated · Engadget · May 23

DeepSeek made a temporary 75% discount on its flagship V4 Pro permanent, cutting top-end pricing to $0.87 per 1 million tokens from $3.48 and low-end pricing to $0.003625 from $0.0145.
The move sharpens DeepSeek’s push to be the low-cost option for AI agents, a strategy it tied to last month’s V4 Pro and V4 Flash launch around “cost-effective” 1 million-context models.
For enterprise users burning through millions of tokens a day, the lower rates could translate into significant savings while widening DeepSeek’s price gap versus models such as OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s Gemini 3.5 Flash.
That undercutting could also intensify pressure on rivals including Anthropic, which has already accused DeepSeek of using “distillation attacks” to learn from Claude models.

Is DeepSeek’s price war a business tactic or a state-backed strategy to sidestep US tech sanctions?

With AI costs plummeting, what are the hidden security and IP risks for businesses using Chinese models?