DeepSeek launches V4.1 Flash with lower AI inference costs
As an official DeepSeek partner, Tencent’s WorkBuddy has fully integrated V4.1 Flash in China and is offering a two-week promotional discount.
As an official DeepSeek partner, Tencent’s WorkBuddy has fully integrated V4.1 Flash in China and is offering a two-week promotional discount.

The potential listing comes after China expanded the STAR Market’s so-called fifth listing standard in June to cover AI companies.
DeepSeek’s latest strategy combines aggressive pricing to win users and peak/off-peak rates to encourage better use of computing capacity.
More revealingly, the company’s internal testing questionnaire asks users whether the model could fully replace the current DeepSeek V4 Pro online.

The hiring points to DeepSeek’s growing focus on its in-house elastic computing platform, DSec, or DeepSeek Elastic Compute.

Under the revised rules, effective from midnight Beijing time on Aug. 23, DeepSeek no longer distinguishes between peak and off-peak hours on weekends.

The company is using price incentives to steer non-urgent workloads toward nights, weekends and holidays

For AI companies, owning or controlling data centers, power resources and physical capacity can translate into lower costs and greater supply certainty.

The planned broad-based price increase suggests the company is officially moving away from its extreme low-cost positioning.

The controversy stems from a transcript of what was described as a nearly four-hour closed-door investor session in mid-July.