{"id":24576,"date":"2026-08-01T22:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T17:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=24576"},"modified":"2026-08-01T22:00:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T17:00:14","slug":"deepseeks-new-bargain-model-accelerates-ais-race-to-zero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=24576","title":{"rendered":"DeepSeek&#039;s new bargain model accelerates AI&#039;s race to zero"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/6Ula5\/fallback.png\" \/><\/p>\n<div>Data: Axios research; Chart: Sara Wise\/Axios<\/div>\n<p>Chinese AI lab <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/06\/16\/microsoft-copilot-cowork-tokenmaxxing-cowork\" target=\"_blank\">DeepSeek<\/a> released a powerful new coding model Friday that charges pennies for vast amounts of code \u2014 the latest sign that some of the smartest software on Earth is rapidly becoming a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/07\/06\/ornn-gpu-compute-commodity\" target=\"_blank\">commodity<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why it matters: <\/strong>Tech giants are pouring <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/05\/05\/ai-spending-stocks-economy\" target=\"_blank\">hundreds of billions of dollars<\/a> into the computing infrastructure powering the AI revolution. Yet the intelligence that infrastructure produces is getting cheaper by the week.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><strong>Zoom in: <\/strong>DeepSeek is the same Chinese startup that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2025\/01\/27\/deepseek-ai-model-china-openai-rival\" target=\"_blank\">ignited a market meltdown<\/a> last January by showing it could build a world-class AI model with far fewer resources than its U.S. rivals.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Its newest model, V4 Flash, <a href=\"https:\/\/huggingface.co\/deepseek-ai\/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731\" target=\"_blank\">performs<\/a> close to the level of Anthropic&#8217;s Claude Opus 4.8, one of the industry&#8217;s most capable systems, on tests of complex coding and autonomous software tasks. <\/li>\n<li>On <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/arena\/status\/2083348755559207047?s=20\" target=\"_blank\">Arena.ai&#8217;s crowdsourced leaderboard<\/a> for front-end coding, V4 Flash debuted ahead of Opus 4.8 \u2014 while delivering the best performance for its price among any model in its class.<\/li>\n<li>The price gap is staggering: DeepSeek charges about 28 cents for the same amount of output that costs $25 on Opus 4.8 \u2014 a 99% discount.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Zoom out: <\/strong>With Chinese models like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/07\/17\/china-ai-kimi-k3-open-source-anthropic-opus\" target=\"_blank\">Kimi K3<\/a> bearing down on the U.S. market, July ushered in a full-scale price war across the AI landscape.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>OpenAI<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/07\/30\/openai-cuts-prices-gpt-terra-luna5\" target=\"_blank\">slashed the price<\/a> of GPT-5.6 Luna \u2014 its fastest, cheapest model for high-volume tasks \u2014 by 80% on Thursday, only three weeks after its launch.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Google<\/strong> released three new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/07\/21\/google-gemini-ai-models\" target=\"_blank\">Gemini<\/a> &#8220;flash&#8221; models all focused on efficiency.<\/li>\n<li><strong>SpaceXAI <\/strong>released <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/07\/08\/spacexai-grok-new-model\" target=\"_blank\">Grok 4.5<\/a>, Elon Musk&#8217;s most capable model yet for coding, research and autonomous tasks, at the same price OpenAI originally charged for Luna before this week&#8217;s cut.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Meta <\/strong>quietly reversed course on its longtime embrace of open weights with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/07\/09\/meta-ai-spark-model-update-developer\" target=\"_blank\">Muse Spark 1.1<\/a>, a closed-source model priced aggressively for developers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The other side: <\/strong>Anthropic remains the clearest holdout, keeping its top-tier Claude models at premium pricing and betting that developers will pay extra for safety and precision.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Between the lines: <\/strong>When a product becomes a commodity, buyers care less about who made it and more about what it costs. Think electricity or gasoline: Few people know which power plant supplied their home or which refinery produced the fuel in their tank.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>AI is heading that way fast. As the performance gap between top-tier models is shrinking, many AI applications no longer depend on a single provider, giving buyers more leverage to shop on price.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;At some point, the next model doesn&#8217;t matter to you,&#8221; says Zack Kass, OpenAI&#8217;s former head of go-to-market and a global AI adviser. He calls the phenomenon &#8220;diminishing model returns.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What to watch: <\/strong>That could create a lucrative market for &#8220;intelligent routers,&#8221; Vinesh Sukumar, Qualcomm&#8217;s vice president of AI product management, told Axios.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Those systems would automatically choose the best model for each task based on capability, speed and price \u2014 further weakening the power of any one lab to command a premium.<\/li>\n<li>For frontier AI labs, that could pose an existential challenge: Spending tens of billions to build a slightly smarter model may buy only a temporary lead, without creating lasting pricing power.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Reality check: <\/strong>Falling prices do not necessarily doom the frontier labs if cheaper AI unleashes vastly more demand.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>OpenAI is betting that companies will use its models so extensively that enormous volume can compensate for thinner margins.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;We will have so much usage of our models that we do not need to be a gigantically high-margin business to be able to afford model training,&#8221; CEO Sam Altman said on the Invest Like the Best <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XDB5beon4DY\" target=\"_blank\">podcast<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The bottom line: <\/strong>The U.S. and China are both racing to make intelligence abundant. Now someone has to prove abundance can still be profitable.<\/p>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Data: Axios research; Chart: Sara Wise\/Axios Chinese AI lab DeepSeek released a powerful new coding model Friday that charges pennies for vast amounts of code \u2014 the latest sign that some of the smartest software on Earth is rapidly becoming a commodity. Why it matters: Tech giants are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/6Ula5\/fallback.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}