BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 14. Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has officially released its V4 Pro model as the company seeks to strengthen its position against rapidly advancing domestic competitors while expanding recruitment, computing capacity and fundraising.
DeepSeek said its V4-Pro-0813 model delivers major improvements in AI-agent capabilities and is available through its application programming interface (API), mobile application and web platforms.
The company also announced that it will increase API prices for its V4 Pro and V4 Flash models and introduce separate peak and off-peak pricing.
The launch is being closely watched after DeepSeek’s lower-cost V4 Flash unexpectedly outperformed the April preview version of V4 Pro in several independent tests. The results suggested that the company had made significant technological improvements between the preview and official release.
DeepSeek became one of China’s most closely followed AI companies after its R1 model gained global attention in early 2025, triggering debate over whether advanced AI systems could be developed at substantially lower costs than those of US competitors.
Since then, the company has faced growing competition from Chinese AI developers including Moonshot AI, Zhipu AI, MiniMax, Alibaba and ByteDance.
DeepSeek is also seeking to turn its technological prominence into a sustainable business. Reuters reported in July that the company was preparing a new fundraising round at a valuation of around $74 billion, following approximately $7.4 billion in its first external financing round in June.
The fundraising represents a shift for DeepSeek, which had previously relied largely on internal financing. The company faces rising costs associated with computing infrastructure, advanced chips, data centres and specialised personnel.
DeepSeek has said it plans to at least double its workforce across several departments, including data-centre operations and AI-agent development. The company has also increased recruitment of chip-design engineers as it works to develop its own AI chips and potentially reduce dependence on suppliers such as Nvidia and Huawei.
