Neural Toons Original

DeepSeek pops the AI pricing bubble

25 May 2026 · The Neural Feed

“When 'good enough' is 34x cheaper, your favorite tool becomes a luxury.”

The story behind the toon

What happened: When 'good enough' is 34x cheaper, your favorite tool becomes a luxury.

This Neural Toon is based on the story “DeepSeek just popped the American AI bubble.”.

Panel 1 – Zoe: GPT-5.5 costs $30 per million outputs.

Panel 1 – Leo: We need to slash costs now.

Panel 2 – Leo: DeepSeek V4 Pro output: $0.87 per million.

Panel 2 – Zoe: That's 34.5x cheaper than OpenAI!

Panel 3 – Zoe: If models are good enough at 1/20th cost...

Panel 3 – Leo: We're switching to DeepSeek today.

Panel 4 – Zoe: But what if DeepSeek's quality is lower?

Panel 4 – Leo: We'll test. You'll lose income.