DeepSeek Hits $1B Annual Revenue on API Demand Surge

The artificial intelligence lab is finalizing a funding round of $7.5 billion that would value the company at roughly $74 billion by the end of October. Annual recurring revenue for DeepSeek recently surpassed $1 billion, a sharp increase from less than $500 million a few months ago. Demand for services remained strong even after CEO Liang Wenfeng raised API prices between 2.3 and 4.5 times, helping the API business reach an 82.9% gross margin through July.

To manage resource constraints, the company allocates 70% of its compute capacity to training and 30% to inference. DeepSeek uses Nvidia RTX 5090 gaming GPUs to run inference for smaller models, which frees up high-end hardware to ease the shortage of training resources. This approach has contributed to tightening retail availability of high-end consumer GPUs.