DeepSeek V4 Peak Valley Pricing Change

- DeepSeek is a Chinese AI company whose large language models have become a major competitor to OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Its V3 model shocked the industry in early 2025 by achieving frontier-level performance at a fraction of the training cost.<br>- This announcement from KuCoin, a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange, signals that DeepSeek V4 will launch around mid-July 2025. KuCoin appears to be a distribution partner or to have early access to pricing details.<br>- "Peak Valley Pricing" refers to a dynamic pricing model: fees are higher during high-demand periods (peak) and lower during low-demand periods (valley). This is common in cloud computing and energy but new for AI model API pricing, suggesting DeepSeek is trying to manage server load by incentivizing off-peak usage.<br>- The context matters because DeepSeek's aggressive pricing and open-weight approach have repeatedly forced Western AI labs to cut prices and rethink their strategies. Any change to DeepSeek's pricing model directly affects the global AI market.