DeepSeek Pricing Surges as AI Costs Emerge | Rewire News Morning Brief

DeepSeek Raises API Prices, Anthropic Strengthens IPO Readiness, OpenAI Restructures Commercialization Team. The pricing, capabilities, and organization of AI are now simultaneously under scrutiny.

1 | DeepSeek V4 Pro Fully Launched, Low-Price Competition Reveals Cost Boundary

On August 13, DeepSeek officially launched V4 Pro and announced an API price adjustment starting on August 17. According to Reuters, the new prices have increased by 50% to 1,100% based on model, token type, and usage period calculations. The peak-time output price of V4 Pro has risen from $0.87 per million tokens to $3.96, approximately 4.6 times the original price.

On the same day, DeepSeek open-sourced Harness v0.1 under the MIT License, which VentureBeat views as an open-source alternative to Claude Code. The 0813 version of V4 Pro focuses on tool invocation, code execution, and multi-step workflows. Low pricing used to be a key lever for DeepSeek. Now, model capabilities, toolchain, and invocation costs are beginning to be compared on the same level, revealing the cost boundary of low-price competition. (Continued from yesterday's report)

(Source: DeepSeek / Reuters / VentureBeat / Caixin)

2 | Trump Authorizes Private Sector Participation in Overseas Cyber Operations

The White House issued a presidential memorandum on August 12, instructing the National Coordination Center to establish a program allowing approved U.S. private companies to conduct cyber reconnaissance and cyber effects operations against overseas cybercriminal organizations under federal government command and oversight. Each action plan must be approved in writing by designated officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Participating companies may also be required to maintain no less than $1 million in bond or escrowed funds.

This is not authorizing businesses to engage in "warfare" on their own. The document brings targets, legal authority, and operational execution under federal control, with companies playing a role as contractually bound operational capabilities. CNN refers to this as "cyber privateering," but the more accurate shift is that commercial cybersecurity firms are extending from defense and reporting to offensive cyber actions that can be mobilized by the state. Issues of accountability, evidence rules, and international friction will also enter the operational boundaries of the commercial cybersecurity industry.

(Source: White House / CNN / TechCrunch)

3｜Anthropic Negotiating Acquisition of Decart, IPO Expected to Boost Capacity Ahead of Schedule

According to Bloomberg, Anthropic is in negotiations to acquire Israeli AI company Decart for about $6 billion, with the deal yet to be finalized. Decart develops world modeling and training efficiency software, targeting respectively the simulation of the physical world and training efficiency on a per-chip basis.

On the other hand, media outlets such as Fortune report that investors expect Anthropic to potentially impact a $2 trillion valuation in its IPO as early as October. The company's disclosed annualized revenue run rate in May exceeded $47 billion, with market expectations of reaching $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of the year. Based on $100 billion, a $2 trillion valuation corresponds to approximately 20 times forward price-to-sales ratio. If the deal goes through, Decart is supplementing not a single product but rather providing the basis for Anthropic to demonstrate whether the upper limits of capability and cost control can run in parallel in the public market.

(Source: Bloomberg / Fortune / PYMNTS)

4｜ChangXin Memory Technologies' Market Cap Surpasses Tencent, Storage Supply Revalued

According to Tom's Hardware, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) reached a market cap of $524 billion on Thursday, surpassing Tencent's approximately $511 billion, becoming the highest-valued Chinese company in less than three weeks since its IPO. The company went public in Shanghai on July 27, raising about $8.6 billion, and saw a first-day gain of 466%.

This round of crossover is not solely due to ChangXin Memory Technologies' rise. On the same day, its stock price fell by 1.2%, while Tencent continued to decline after its financial report. Tencent's second-quarter capital expenditure increased by 176% year-on-year to 52.8 billion yuan, with AI investments leading to negative free cash flow. It is both a buyer of computing power and storage and is now pushing the supply side into a higher valuation range. Yesterday, Yangtze Memory Technologies entered the top three in NAND shipments, and today ChangXin Memory Technologies surpassed Tencent as the market begins to reprice China's delivery capabilities for storage, along with sanction risks (continued from yesterday's report).

(Source: Tom's Hardware / Reuters / Tencent Q2 Financial Report)

5｜OpenAI's Annualized Run Rate Exceeds $40 Billion, Commercial Team Sees Another Leadership Change

According to Bloomberg, OpenAI's annualized revenue run rate has surpassed $40 billion, and the company secretly submitted its IPO filing in June. On the same day, Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser announced her departure. She joined OpenAI in December last year, served for about 8 months, and will be succeeded by the current president of cybersecurity company Wiz, Dali Rajic. Previously, OpenAI's former COO Brad Lightcap also announced his departure.

The annualized revenue run rate provided a pricing basis for the IPO, but the ongoing adjustment of key commercial positions also revealed the organization's capacity to adapt. Dresser's departure reason has not been disclosed and cannot be simply attributed to IPO pressure. However, in a phase of rapid revenue expansion and continuous product line extension, whoever defines the priority of large clients, channels, and productization will directly determine whether revenue figures can translate into sustainable operational capability.

(Source: Bloomberg / CNBC / The New York Times / The Information)

Also Worth Knowing ↓

Databricks, with a $190 billion valuation, completed a $5 billion financing round, stating that its annualized revenue has exceeded $70 billion, with a year-on-year growth of over 80%. The funds will be allocated to AI gateways, serverless databases, and enterprise AI assistants. Enterprise data platforms are now directing new capital towards AI's distribution gateway.

(Source: Databricks / CNBC / Bloomberg)

The US SEC's "Innovation Exemption" rule for crypto tokenization has yet to materialize. The timing of the compliance exemption's implementation remains uncertain, and Wall Street's pace of bringing traditional assets onto the blockchain continues to be constrained by regulatory timelines.

(Source: CoinDesk)

Apple is reportedly in negotiations with publishers to integrate real-time news into Siri and pay for content usage, with the budget possibly reaching nine figures. If the agreement is finalized, Apple will incorporate content licensing into the AI assistant's product costs.

(Source: TechCrunch / The Wall Street Journal)

According to Bloomberg, as of mid-July, Microsoft has purchased 8.55 million metric tons of carbon removal credits year-to-date, a decrease of about 80% compared to the previous year. Amid data center expansion, tech companies' emission reduction commitments are also beginning to face procurement scale and cost constraints.

(Source: Bloomberg)

In July, the US PPI remained unchanged month-on-month, while the core PPI increased by 0.2%. The S&P 500 index closed at a record high on Thursday. The temporary easing of wholesale inflation has temporarily suppressed rate hike concerns, and risk assets continue to trade in a soft-landing scenario.

(Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics / Reuters)

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