DeepSeek Price Hike, AI Cost Emerges | Rewire News Morning Update

DeepSeek Raises API Prices, Anthropic Enhances IPO Preparedness, 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

DeepSeek officially launched V4 Pro on August 13 and announced an API price adjustment starting from August 17. According to Reuters, the new prices are increased by 50% to 1,100% based on model, token type, and usage period calculations. Specifically, 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, recognized by VentureBeat 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 was once a key leverage for DeepSeek. Now, model capabilities, toolchain, and invocation costs are beginning to be compared on the same scale, revealing the cost boundary of low-price competition. (Continued from yesterday's report)

(Source: DeepSeek / Reuters / VentureBeat / Caixin)

2｜Trump Authorizes Private Companies to Engage in Overseas Cyber Operations

The White House issued a presidential memorandum on August 12, directing the establishment of a National Coordination Center to allow approved U.S. private companies, under federal government command and oversight, to conduct cyber reconnaissance and cyber effects operations against overseas cybercriminal organizations. Each operation plan must be approved in writing by designated leaders of the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Participating companies may also be required to maintain at least $1 million in bond or escrow funds.

This is not about allowing companies to independently "go to war." The document brings targets, legal authority, and operational execution under federal control, with companies playing a role as contractually constrained execution capabilities. CNN referred to it as "cyber privateering," but a more accurate shift is that commercial security firms are expanding from defense and reporting to offensive cyber operations that can be mobilized by the nation. Questions of liability, evidence rules, and cross-border friction will also enter the operational boundaries of the commercial security industry.

(Source: White House / CNN / TechCrunch)

3｜Anthropic in Talks to Acquire Decart, IPO Expected to Boost Capacity

According to Bloomberg, Anthropic is currently in talks to acquire Israeli AI company Decart for approximately $6 billion, although the deal has not been finalized yet. Decart develops world modeling and training efficiency software, focusing on simulating the physical world and training efficiency on-chip, respectively.

On the other end, media outlets like Fortune report that investors are anticipating Anthropic to make an early impact with its IPO, aiming for a $2 trillion valuation as soon as October. The company's disclosed annualized revenue run rate in May exceeded $47 billion, with market expectations reaching $100 billion to $120 billion by the year-end. At $100 billion, the $2 trillion valuation implies a forward price-to-sales ratio of approximately 20x. If the deal goes through, Decart's addition would not be about a single product but rather providing Anthropic with evidence of its ability to showcase the upper limit of capacity and cost control to the public market.

(Source: Bloomberg / Fortune / PYMNTS)

4｜ChangXin Memory Technologies Surpasses Tencent in Market Cap as Storage Supply Gets Revalued

According to Tom's Hardware, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) saw its market cap rise to $524 billion on Thursday, surpassing Tencent's approximately $511 billion, making it China's most valuable company in less than three weeks after its IPO. The company debuted on the Shanghai stock exchange on July 27, raising about $8.6 billion, and witnessed a first-day gain of 466%.

This shift in supremacy is not solely due to ChangXin Memory Technologies' surge. On that day, its stock price fell by 1.2%, while Tencent continued to decline post-earnings report. Tencent's second-quarter capital expenditure surged 176% year-on-year to ¥52.8 billion, with AI investments leading to negative free cash flow. It acts as a buyer of computing power and storage while pushing suppliers into a higher valuation zone. 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 capability for storage, along with sanction risks (following up on yesterday's report).

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

5｜OpenAI's Annualized Run Rate Exceeds $400 Billion, Further Changes in Commercialization Team

Reported by Bloomberg, OpenAI's annualized revenue run rate has surpassed $400 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, serving for about 8 months before being succeeded by Dali Rajic, the current CEO of cybersecurity company Wiz. Previously, OpenAI's former COO Brad Lightcap also announced his resignation.

The annualized revenue run rate provided a pricing basis for the IPO, but the continuous adjustment of key commercial positions has also shown the market the organization's ability to adapt. Dresser's resignation reasons have not been disclosed and cannot be simply attributed to the pressures of going public. However, in a stage of rapid revenue expansion and continuous product line extension, whoever defines the priorities of key clients, channels, and productization will directly determine whether revenue figures can translate into stable operational capabilities.

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

Also Worth Knowing ↓

Databricks, valued at $190 billion, has completed a $5 billion funding round, stating that its annualized revenue has exceeded $70 billion, with a year-over-year growth of over 80%. The funds will be allocated to AI gateway, serverless database, and enterprise AI assistant. The enterprise data platform is now channeling new capital into AI distribution gateways.

(Source: Databricks / CNBC / Bloomberg)

The US SEC's "Innovation Exemption" rule for crypto tokenization has yet to be finalized. The timeline for regulatory compliance exemptions remains uncertain, and Wall Street's pace of bringing traditional assets onto the blockchain is still constrained by regulatory deadlines.

Apple is reportedly in negotiations with publishers to have real-time news accessed by Siri and pay for content usage fees, with the budget potentially reaching the nine-figure USD range. If the agreement is reached, Apple will include content licensing as part of the AI assistant's product costs.

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 approximately 80% from the previous year. During the data center expansion phase, tech companies' emission reduction commitments are also beginning to face procurement scale and cost constraints.

In July, US PPI remained unchanged on a month-over-month basis, while core PPI rose by 0.2%. The S&P 500 index closed at a new all-time high on Thursday. The temporary easing of wholesale inflation has temporarily dampened interest rate hike concerns, and risk assets continue to trade in a soft landing scenario.

(Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics / Reuters)