# DeepSeek Ships Cheaper AI Model

> DeepSeek quietly releases V4.1-Flash-1017 model beating rivals on agent tasks.
- Title: DeepSeek Ships Cheaper AI Model · Startup Fortune | Shortify
- Summary: DeepSeek quietly releases V4.1-Flash-1017 model beating rivals on agent tasks. DeepSeek's V4.1-Flash-1017 model improves software engineering benchmarks at…
- Keywords: deepseek, v41-flash-1017, deepsw, agent tasks, ai pricing, api discount, search api, hugging face, modelscope, mit license, startups, business
- Source: Startup Fortune — https://startupfortune.com/deepseek-quietly-ships-v41-flash-1017-beating-rivals-on-agent-tasks
- Published: 2026-10-19T04:50:08+00:00
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: deepseek, v41-flash-1017, deepsw, agent tasks, ai pricing, api discount, search api, hugging face, modelscope, mit license, startups, business
## DeepSeek Releases Model
DeepSeek dropped V4.1-Flash-1017 on Hugging Face two days ago without a launch event.
## Model Improves Benchmark Scores
The update pushed DeepSWE scores from 74.2 to 77.0, beating all 11 benchmarks by 2.0 to 11.1 points.
## Model Architecture Details
V4.1-Flash-1017 uses a causal encoder-decoder design with 552 billion parameters.
## Cost Efficiency Focus
Only 8 billion parameters activate while reading prompts, and 16 billion while writing responses.
## Search API Opens
DeepSeek opened its proprietary Search API to the public for the first time.
## Permanent API Discount
DeepSeek made its 75 percent V4-Pro API discount permanent after the promotion period.
## Price Comparison
Peak-hour API pricing sits at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens.
## Cost Advantage
DeepSeek's pricing is half the cost of Anthropic's Claude Opus or OpenAI's frontier-tier models.
## Key takeaway

DeepSeek's V4.1-Flash-1017 model improves software engineering benchmarks at lower cost than Western rivals.