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Sep 19, 2026
DEEPSEEK: 64.8% OF TOKENS. 4.5% OF SPEND.
VIA Vercel
OPEN THE RECEIPTS →AI NEWS PAGECASE FILECOMPANY FILE
DeepSeek
THE EFFICIENCY SHOCK FROM CHINA
FILE UPDATED Oct 8, 2026
WHY THEY MATTER
DeepSeek's models served 64.8% of the tokens on Vercel's AI Gateway while accounting for just 4.5% of spend — hard proof that frontier-grade AI doesn't require frontier-grade budgets.
SOURCES: VercelCisco TalosMarkTechPost
THE RAP SHEET
2
Oct 3, 2026
DEEPSEEK'S OPEN-SOURCE AI AGENT PASSES 240,000 GITHUB STARS
VIA MarkTechPost
OPEN THE RECEIPTS →3
Sep 30, 2026
DEEPSEEK OPEN-SOURCED CHINA'S ANSWER TO CUDA
VIA Bloomberg via Startup Fortune
OPEN THE RECEIPTS →ZIMBO'S READ ON DeepSeek
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IT MADE FRONTIER AI CHEAP. NOW IT'S OPEN-SOURCING THE STACK.
DeepSeek's models served 64.8% of the tokens on Vercel's AI Gateway for just 4.5% of the spend — the efficiency shock that broke the theory that only money wins the frontier. Since then the Hangzhou lab has open-sourced a Huawei Ascend chip programming stack and an MIT-licensed AI agent harness that collected over 240,000 GitHub stars. Its models now even vote inside the first reported autonomous AI malware, breaking ties when machines elect what to steal next.
Sep 22, 2026
FOUR AIS VOTE ON WHAT TO STEAL NEXT. DEEPSEEK BREAKS THE TIES.
Cisco Talos's 'Closed Quorum' report on the first reported autonomous AI C2 implant described a panel of four models — DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral, Gemini — voting on each next move, with DeepSeek breaking ties. No humans admitted.
SOURCES: Cisco Talosfirst-partySC Mediareported
Sep 30, 2026
DEEPSEEK OPEN-SOURCED CHINA'S ANSWER TO CUDA
DeepSeek and Huawei open-sourced an Ascend AI programming stack — the communication libraries needed to run 128 Huawei chips welded into one supernode — a move reported as the path to replacing Nvidia inside China.
SOURCES: Bloomberg via Startup FortunereportedReuters via Bitcoin Versusreported
Oct 3, 2026
DEEPSEEK'S OPEN-SOURCE AI AGENT PASSES 240,000 GITHUB STARS
DeepSeek Harness v0.2 brought official desktop apps for Mac and Windows to the MIT-licensed open-source agent harness — everything a plugin — with coverage counting 240,000 to 242,000 GitHub stars.
SOURCES: MarkTechPostreportedgetaibookreported
FILE FACTS
EMPIRE CARD
Sourced company statistics. Full receipts on each card.
- FOUNDED
- 2023Simple Wikipedia
- HEADQUARTERS
- Hangzhou, Zhejiang, ChinaSimple Wikipedia
- STATUS
- PrivateSimple Wikipedia
- LEADER
- Liang Wenfeng · founder and CEOSimple Wikipedia
- AI PRODUCTS
- DeepSeek V3 and DeepSeek R1 — open-weight large language models; V3 trained for a claimed US$6 millionALMBoK
- PARENT
- Funded by High-Flyer, Liang Wenfeng's quantitative hedge fundSimple Wikipedia
- REVENUE
- Annualized revenue run rate topped US$1 billion, per The Information · as of Sep 27, 2026WOWTALE