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Published fact-check

Claim that DeepSeek-V4-Pro pricing will fall after Huawei Ascend 950 deployment

Supported

Claim checked

“"DeepSeek said Pro pricing could fall sharply once Huawei Ascend 950 supernodes are ​deployed at scale in the second half of the year"”

Published

Verdict

Supported

DeepSeek has officially indicated that the pricing for its DeepSeek-V4-Pro model is expected to decrease significantly in the second half of 2026. This reduction is tied to the planned large-scale deployment of Huawei Ascend 950 supernodes, which will address current computing power limitations.

5 reviewed sources behind this verdict.

Reasoning

The claim is directly supported by official documentation released alongside the DeepSeek-V4 model on April 24, 2026. According to the technical report, the company acknowledged that the service throughput for the Pro model is currently limited by high-end computing power.

A footnote in the report specifically states that the price of the Pro model will be "significantly reduced" once the Huawei Ascend 950 supernode is launched in batches during the second half of the year. This confirms both the specific hardware dependency and the timeline mentioned in the claim.

Source quality: The report relies on a direct quote from a footnote in the DeepSeek-V4 technical report, as documented by the China Research Collective and the official DeepSeek API documentation.

Key checks

  • DeepSeek's official statement on pricing: The technical report for DeepSeek-V4 includes a footnote predicting a significant price drop for the Pro tier once hardware limitations are resolved.

  • Link to Huawei Ascend 950 hardware: The documentation explicitly identifies the 'Ascend 950 supernode' as the catalyst for increased throughput and lower costs.

  • Timeline for deployment: The official announcement targets the 'second half of the year' (2026) for the batch launch of these supernodes.

Confidence

High