DeepSeek Raises API Prices Up to 12-Fold With V4 Pro Launch

* 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 curated news items tailored to each reader type.

1. DeepSeek Raises Prices 12-Fold as China's AI Profit Race Begins

- Key summary: Chinese AI developer DeepSeek unveiled the official version of DeepSeek V4 Pro and announced an API price increase at the same time. During peak hours (2 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.), input costs 9 yuan and output 27 yuan per million tokens, while off-peak hours are priced at half that rate. The cache-hit price for reusing previously output input values jumped 12-fold, from 0.025 yuan to 0.3 yuan. Leveraging prices about one-tenth those of competitors, DeepSeek topped global token throughput from the 27th of last month through the 2nd of this month, but analysts suggest it has completely revised its strategy ahead of a 50 billion yuan (about 10 trillion won) funding round and an initial public offering (IPO). U.S. firms, meanwhile, appear to be counterattacking with the so-called cost-per-outcome logic that they can handle the same task with fewer tokens, potentially resulting in a lower total cost.

2. China's Domestic Demand Falters in Bid to Curb Property Bubble; Korea Sees Jobs Hit First

- Key summary: The price of China's structural transition — which filled the growth gap but left employment empty — has been confirmed in figures. According to the Bank of Korea, the production-inducing coefficient for China's advanced manufacturing was 3.6 to 3.8, far exceeding that of the real estate and construction sector (2.6). But for the same scale of production, construction required 2.2 times as much labor as manufacturing, and real estate 1.5 times. As property prices — which account for about 50% of household assets — corrected, the consumer confidence index plunged to 86.7 in April 2022 and has failed to recover the baseline of 100 through last year. One forecast holds that the spread of automation, robotics and AI could replace 90 million to 100 million jobs, centered on traditional manufacturing, by 2035. In Korea, meanwhile, similar warning signs are sounding: acquisition tax revenue in Gyeonggi Province fell 25.9% from four years earlier, and, according to the Korea Labor Institute, the increase in employed persons in the first half of this year came to just 108,000.

3. Chey Tae-won: 'Weighing U.S. Wafer-Fab; Worst Supply-Demand Imbalance Next Year'

- Key summary: SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won signaled an intention to build a memory chip front-end (wafer-processing) production facility in the United States. In an interview with U.S. business broadcaster CNBC, Chey said SK would be willing to do so but that finding a suitable site is really difficult, marking the first time SK hynix (000660.KS) has officially stated that it has been reviewing candidate sites for a front-end fab for more than a month. SK hynix is currently building an advanced packaging plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, investing $3.87 billion (about 5.4 trillion won), but it is taking a cautious approach to front-end investment given the surging construction costs and infrastructure bottlenecks that Taiwan's TSMC and the U.S.'s Micron are experiencing. Chey also forecast that total memory output would rise to five times current production capacity within the next 10 years. Alongside this, he presented a plan to reduce downturn risk by expanding custom HBM and long-term agreements (LTA) starting with HBM5 (the eighth generation).

4. Gold Regains Its Shine: 'Worth Considering for Diversification'

- Key summary: Gold prices, which had been pushed back by a strong dollar and rising interest rates, have recently been on a rebound. Over the past three months, KODEX Gold Active fell 12.77%, while SOL International Gold and ACE KRX Gold Spot dropped 12.55% and 11.32%, respectively; but their returns over the past month turned around to 2.84% for ACE KRX Gold Spot, 1.91% for KODEX Gold Active and 1.53% for SOL International Gold. Early this month, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew plans for a large-scale attack on Iran and negotiations on reopening the Strait of Hormuz advanced, sending international oil prices and interest rates lower; combined with weak July U.S. employment data weakening expectations for a Federal Reserve rate hike, gold prices rose above $4,000 per troy ounce as a support level. In addition, according to the World Gold Council (WGC), central banks' net gold purchases rose from 56.5 tons in the first quarter of this year to 288 tons in the second quarter, a record high for a second quarter. Nam Yong-su, head of the ETF division at Korea Investment Management, assessed that while a sharp rise in interest rates could bring a short-term correction, gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are worth holding to a certain extent as part of a core-satellite strategy.