alt Hacker News"The thing" isn't free [0]: It is cheap by US/EU income standards.
> who is the customer
If no one else, then definitely those that can only budget $1/mo to $5/mo. Probably 100s of millions, if not billions, of the Global South.
[0] Free access to DeepSeek v4 Flash is indeed available from providers like OpenRouter, OpenCode, and Freebuff (to name a few), but no ZDR.
I mean, if you're paying this little, you aren't the customer; the service is either subsidized by investor money (best option), the government (which makes it unfair competition at best) or profit is being realized elsewhere (where?)