DeepSeek V4-Flash 0731: a post-training-only update that pushes agent performance near GPT-5.6 at ~60% lower cost

[AINews] not much happened today

DeepSeek released V4-Flash 0731 with unchanged architecture and size—284B total, 13B active, 1M context. A post-training-only update pushed Terminal-Bench from 56.9 to 82.7 and lifted agent benchmarks across the board. API pricing is $0.14/$0.28 per 1M input/output tokens, dropping to $0.0028 with a 98% cache-hit discount. Artificial Analysis ranks it 1 point behind GPT-5.6 Luna (max 51) while costing ~60% less per task. Weights were released same day under MIT; Unsloth published 4-bit quants needing ~168GB VRAM. The post doesn't disclose the specific post-training recipe.

Why it matters: DeepSeek V4-Flash 0731 is a post-training-only update with a sharp agent benchmark jump and open-weight pricing that challenges GPT-5.6's frontier. Score held below 85 because the source is a paid newsletter roundup, not the primary release, and the self-deprecating headline u...