Chinese AI lab DeepSeek released V4 Flash and V4 Pro previews with 1.6 trillion parameters and 1 million token context at a fraction of frontier model pricing.
Chinese AI lab DeepSeek previewed its V4 model family with 1.6 trillion parameters, 1 million token context windows and pricing that undercuts frontier competitors by an order of magnitude.
DeepSeek released V4 Flash ($0.14 per million input tokens) and V4 Pro (1.6T parameters, $0.145 input), both open-weight and built on Huawei Ascend 950 chips.
Every time a capable open-source model drops at rock-bottom pricing, it compresses margins for proprietary AI providers and gives businesses cheaper options for content generation, analysis and automation.
Australian businesses paying premium rates for GPT-4 or Claude now have a credible alternative for high-volume, cost-sensitive AI tasks like content drafts, data analysis and customer support.
Marketing teams spending on AI APIs for content production, agencies running AI at scale, and any business evaluating build-versus-buy for AI capabilities.
Ignoring open-source alternatives means overpaying for AI capabilities that are rapidly commoditising at the inference layer.
Benchmark DeepSeek V4 Flash against your current AI provider on three to five common marketing tasks to compare quality and cost.
Review your AI budget allocation given that inference costs are falling faster than most forecasts predicted.