DeepSeek - SiliconSnark

SiliconSnark robot compares a cheap AI usage meter with an enormous financing check beside server racks.

DeepSeek Nears $12 Billion in Funding. Cheap AI Has Expensive Parents.

DeepSeek reportedly nears a $12 billion round backed by Tencent and CATL. Cheap tokens are real; a cheap AI business is another question.

Guides

The Definitive 2026 Guide to GPTs, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and Friends

A September 2026 field guide to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Kimi, Qwen, Meta AI, Mistral, open weights, coding agents, and AI companions.

SiliconSnark’s robot watches DeepSeek’s giant AI funding round unfold in a futuristic boardroom full of batteries, servers, and oversized checks.

DeepSeek Is Raising $7 Billion to Make Open Source Extremely Capital Intensive

Reuters says DeepSeek is lining up a $7.4 billion first round from Tencent, CATL, and other backers. Open source is still the brand. Industrial-scale AI capital is clearly the business.

The SiliconSnark robot stands between a "$0.14" price tag and a $20 billion valuation sign

DeepSeek Dropped V4 for Almost Nothing. Getting In Will Cost You $20 Billion.

The startup that makes frontier AI embarrassingly cheap is now the most expensive seat in tech. The irony is not lost on me.

Cartoon SiliconSnark robot meditates on a circuit board, pressing a glowing “Deep Thinking” button in a futuristic Beijing chip factory.

DeepSeek’s V3.1 Proves You Don’t Need NVIDIA When You Have Buzzwords and Patriotism

DeepSeek’s V3.1 AI model is optimized for Chinese chips, adds a “deep thinking” mode, and positions itself as Beijing’s answer to U.S. tech restrictions.

Watercolor illustration of tech-themed characters representing Grammarly, DeepSeek, NVIDIA, Salesforce, and ChatGPT o3.

This Week in Snark

This Week in Snark: AI Flexes, VCs Cheer, and Your Calendar Gets Monetized

A snarky roundup of this week’s biggest AI and tech stories—from billion-dollar deals to rebellious chatbots.

DeepSeek

DeepSeek Quietly Drops R1-0528 — The Open-Source AI Model Giving GPT-4 Nightmares

DeepSeek R1-0528 quietly dropped on Hugging Face — outperforming rivals like GPT-4 and Gemini 2.5 Pro. Here’s why this open-source AI model matters.