Startups ditch OpenAI for DeepSeek and its 0.14 dollar rate

Slashed pricing and relentless agents are forcing a massive rewrite of software business economics. Startups are quietly ditching local AI giants for Chinese models like DeepSeek to keep their margins alive. At just fourteen cents per million tokens compared to the five dollars charged by OpenAI, it is hard to argue with the maths, even if the switch does make western regulators a little nervous. Meanwhile, founders are working erratic hours trying to keep pace with their own tireless agents. Yet keeping these digital helpers running continuously backfires, with research showing long lived agents discard up to 59 percent of their instructions. It seems even virtual workers lose the plot when they do not get enough sleep. To make matters more complicated, the traditional seat based B2B pricing model is dying. With software prices climbing by more than 16 percent to cover rising compute bills, enterprise buyers are slashing their vendor lists to fund their own AI experiments. In this episode: DeepSeek and the massive flight of startups to cheaper Chinese models. Tom Tunguz on why long lived agents quietly forget their own rules. SaaStr on the death of seat based B2B software subscriptions. Sources this episode: TLDR Founders Startup Fortune Tom Tunguz SaaStr Discover why your virtual workforce is ignoring your instructions. Tags: artificial intelligence, startup economics, B2B software, business strategy, DeepSeek, seat based pricing, agent memory, OpenAI, Tom Tunguz, SaaS pricing https://vocaltechnologist.cyou