DeepSeek Raises API Prices Up to 12-Fold as China's AI Race Turns to Profit

* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an AI-based personalized news recommendation and summarization service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six tailored news items by reader type.

1. Eumgil HR to Build an "AI Job-Change Assistant"

- Summary: Eumgil HR, a firm specializing in outplacement services, is launching development of a next-generation job-change program using artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Eumgil HR was selected as a final recipient for the "Scale-up TIPS" R&D program, a private-investment-linked technology innovation support initiative run by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and will receive about 2 billion won ($1.4 million) in government support over the next three years. The project, titled "Real-time Career Transition AI Agent and Platform Development," aims to build a system that provides everything from counseling to reemployment probability forecasts on a single platform. It analyzes users' voice or text in real time to help design personalized career paths. This marks Eumgil HR's fourth government R&D project.

2. Wanted Lab Swings to Q2 Profit on AX-Centered Business Diversification

- Summary: HR tech firm Wanted Lab swung to a profit in the second quarter of this year on the back of its expanding AI transformation (AX) business. On a consolidated basis, Wanted Lab posted revenue of 11.7 billion won and operating profit of 1.7 billion won in the second quarter. Revenue rose 31.5% from the previous quarter, and compared with the same period a year earlier, revenue grew 20.6% and operating profit surged 240%. The earnings improvement was driven by an integrated package linking training, agent development and recruitment, centered on Ennoia, an enterprise solution for creating and operating agents. Revenue related to AI training rose 18% from the previous quarter. Lee Bok-ki, CEO of Wanted Lab, said the company plans to expand the share of its global and AX businesses to about 50% of the total by the fourth quarter of this year.

3. DeepSeek Raises Prices Up to 12-Fold as China's AI Profit Race Heats Up

- Summary: Chinese AI developer DeepSeek announced a plan to raise application programming interface (API) fees alongside the official release of "DeepSeek V4 Pro." It introduced a differentiated pricing scheme separating peak and off-peak hours, and the price for "cache hits," which reuse previously processed input values, rose 12-fold, from 0.025 yuan to 0.3 yuan. DeepSeek rapidly expanded its user base with an ultra-low-price strategy set at about one-tenth the level of competitors, taking the top spot in global token throughput from July 27 to August 2. However, analysts say the company overhauled its strategy ahead of a 50 billion yuan (about 10 trillion won) funding round and an initial public offering (IPO). Meanwhile, with Moonshot AI and ByteDance introducing paid pricing plans and Alibaba signaling it will follow, the Chinese AI industry as a whole appears to be pivoting toward monetization.

4. Chey Tae-won: "Weighing U.S. Front-End Fab; Worst Supply Imbalance Next Year"

- Summary: SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said in an interview with U.S. business network CNBC that he intends to build a front-end (wafer processing) memory chip production facility in the United States. Chey noted that finding a suitable site is difficult. SK hynix (000660.KS) is currently building an advanced packaging plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, with an investment of $3.87 billion (about 5.4 trillion won). He voiced concern over "chipflation," saying next year will be the toughest, as demand surges at a time when memory companies have not adequately prepared for capacity expansion. SK hynix is also reshaping its cooperation with Big Tech around custom HBM-focused long-term agreements (LTAs) and considering the introduction of a "memory-as-a-service" concept.