[SMM Computing Power Midday Review] Computing Power Leasing Moves Sideways, Model API Price Hikes Disrupt Token Pricing

[Market Overview]

The computing power leasing market was broadly flat this morning, with quotes for mainstream models and regions unchanged from the previous day. Price information collected by SMM showed that no new listings emerged in the market, quotes for existing resources remained stable, and neither the price center nor the high-end price structure changed.

[Computing Power Leasing: No New Resources Released, Prices Flat]

Monthly rental and per-GPU-hour quotes for all models monitored by SMM remained unchanged from previous levels today. The direct reason for the flat performance was that no new resources were released, supply-side growth was zero, existing contracts and listings held at prior levels, and prices lacked momentum to move. Below are selected model prices by major region.

Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei:

Yangtze River Delta:

Western China:

No new listings were seen across major computing power leasing clusters. The market entered a temporary supply vacuum, and both buyers and sellers took a wait-and-see stance in the short term.

[SMM View]

Against the backdrop of flat computing power hardware leasing prices, pricing for upstream model services was changing. SMM learned that DeepSeek will raise its V4-series API pricing starting August 17 and simultaneously introduce differentiated peak and off-peak charging. Among these, cached input categories with near-zero marginal costs saw the most pronounced increases, clearly exceeding the range of normal cost-driven increases. SMM believes this move has the clear feature of testing the market with high prices and leaving room to maneuver for subsequent pricing anchors—first testing market absorption capacity with high prices, then adjusting downward based on feedback. For the industry chain, two points need attention. First, the source for token pricing is highly monolithic, concentrated in large model producers themselves, and the price discovery mechanism is opaque.

Second, front-line teams engaged in the token business have long faced the dilemma of a single pricing source and limited bargaining power. As producers start raising prices, token costs will become a variable that must be closely tracked.