DeepSeek price hike mid-episode
DeepSeek, previously so cheap its pricing barely registered on token-cost charts, announced significant API price increases mid-episode.
Snapshot · God Mode Podcast
EP25: Anthropic vs OpenAI, SpaceX chaos, 25 lessons in 25 episodes
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Aug 8, 2026
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DeepSeek, too cheap to see on the chart
At 16:20 · chapter starts 15:02
Rik pulls up the token-cost chart that had been circulating on his timeline: Anthropic, OpenAI, Moonshot, Alibaba Qwen all show visible bars. DeepSeek V4 Flash is barely a sliver. The gap between proprietary subscriptions and DeepSeek's open-source API is so small that the subscriptions actually win on pure token value. But then the news drops mid-recording: DeepSeek has announced major API price increases. Ben unpacks the nuance — DeepSeek is open-source, so users can theoretically pull the model and run it elsewhere, meaning the official API hike is really about DeepSeek trying to make money rather than a fundamental model cost increase. Still, the direction of travel is clear: even the cheapest corner of the AI market is now moving toward monetisation, and the era of austerity pricing may be giving way to something more expensive across the board.
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