Forensic investigation into DeepSeek’s unit economics: why no Western cloud could match the pre-August $0.28 price, why DeepSeek temporarily hiked rates on August 16 after an 8-trillion-token surge, how V4.1-Flash’s 890-byte CED attention enables Western startups to hit $0.66 profitably today, and why American Big Tech hyperscalers charge a 4,000% markup to service legacy debt.
Muse Spark 1.3 scores 62 on Artificial Analysis. Compare Gemini 3.8 Flash, DeepSeek V4 Flash pricing, and Terminal-Bench 2.1 vs 4.0.
Can Apple’s M5 Ultra Mac Studio run DeepSeek V4 Flash locally? We explain memory, quantization, runtimes, speed limits, pricing and who should buy.