Repollo
On August 13, 2026, DeepSeek launched V4 Pro and announced API price hikes of up to 1,100%, effective Aug 16 — a startling reversal for the lab whose entire 2025 story was ‘frontier AI at bargain prices.’ The same week, Google cut Gemini 3.7 Flash to $0.75 per million input tokens, openly targeting the low-cost tier DeepSeek used to own. Defenders say the hike simply admits real inference economics, and note DeepSeek is also raising an $8B round it clearly needs to fund. Critics argue ‘cheap’ WAS the brand — the moment it stopped undercutting Silicon Valley, the price-disruptor story hands straight to Gemini, Llama, and open-source challengers, and the legend dies with V4 Pro.