Liang Wenfeng

DeepSeek's reported $15.9 billion round arrives with a cheaper-AI pitch

Leading the company through its reported October 2026 round

DeepSeek reportedly raised about $15 billion in October 2026, one of the largest venture rounds ever for a Chinese company. The Hangzhou lab has spent the year arguing that AI can be cheaper to run.

Updated 3 days ago

DeepSeek releases V4.1-Flash, a cheaper model for long-context AI agents

New Capabilities

As of October 2026: Runs DeepSeek from Hangzhou; rarely speaks publicly

DeepSeek released V4.1-Flash on September 10, a model that reads a million tokens of context while using a fraction of the memory its predecessors needed. Its key-value cache, the memory a model keeps to recall what it has already read, drops to 890 bytes per token, one quarter of the prior Flash generation.

Updated Oct 8

DeepSeek ships V4-Pro and raises its prices

New Capabilities

As of August 2026: Leading DeepSeek's push to monetize its flagship models

DeepSeek's flagship model left preview on August 13. Independent benchmark results are mixed: V4-Pro scored 53 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, trailing a mid-tier OpenAI GPT-5.6 model but roughly matching Zhipu AI's GLM-5.2, while beating Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 on cybersecurity tests.

Updated Aug 14

Liang Wenfeng

Stories

DeepSeek's reported $15.9 billion round arrives with a cheaper-AI pitch

DeepSeek releases V4.1-Flash, a cheaper model for long-context AI agents

DeepSeek ships V4-Pro and raises its prices