Last month I checked my AI bill and my hand trembled
I run a Xiaohongshu AI tools account, topping up ChatGPT with over ¥500 every month. When I pulled up the bill, I stared at the number in a daze. Anan's in the same boat — he runs an e-commerce customer service SaaS in Shenzhen, burning ¥12,000 a month on model API calls alone. We were both waiting for one thing: when would compute get cheaper?
DeepSeek just dropped DSec — might be the answer
DeepSeek (the Hangzhou AI company that once made Silicon Valley nervous) just published a paper called DSec — short for elastic computing. In plain words: when AI isn't busy, you spend less; when it's slammed, you scale up. This isn't a tool for you — it's backend infrastructure for AI vendors.
Founder Liang Wenfeng's team — I caught a glimpse of them at a Geek Park Hangzhou event last time. When their V3 dropped, their compute consumption was an order of magnitude lower than peers. DSec pushes that cost-saving logic one step further.
What does this mean for you? Starting next year, costs on domestic Chinese models (DeepSeek, Hunyuan, Tongyi) could drop another 30–60%. I've already started testing "domestic replacements" for a few tools on my subscription list.
Replicating this today: ¥0 for now, but it matters
Money: You pay nothing. DSec is backend infra, not sold separately.
Time: Wait 6–12 months, watch which vendor integrates it first.
Tech barrier: Too high for either of us to read — skip.
First step: Open your usual AI tool's "balance" or "usage" page and write down your monthly spend. That number is your negotiation leverage going forward.
What to do next, depending on your stage
Just starting, no clients yet: Don't worry. Free tiers cover you for a while — wait until you land paying work. Totally fine to skip for now.
1–2 clients in: I'd suggest screenshotting your monthly AI bill. Look back in three months — if you're still on foreign models, try domestic as backup. DeepSeek and Tongyi Qianwen APIs are both cheap. I made this mistake once — ran two models side by side for comparison, only to find that in Chinese scenarios, domestic models don't lose at all.
Scaling up: This one's most critical for you. At your next renewal, ask sales one question: "Do you support DeepSeek? When?" Ask that, and they'll knock something off the price.