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Physix Frontier · News Briefing Card (TMTPost · Oct 18, 2026)

DeepSeek Forms Product Division, Merges Harness, Web, App, Platform Teams

KEY FACTS

  • On October 16, DeepSeek merged its Harness team with its Web, App, and Platform teams into a single Product Division.
  • Cui Tianyi, formerly head of Harness, was appointed head of the Product Division, overseeing product, design, and engineering.
  • The Product Division is simultaneously hiring for product designer and designer roles.
  • DeepSeek has roughly 130 million monthly active users, ranking third among China's AI-native apps, down 20.3% year over year.
  • DeepSeek's annualized revenue has surpassed $1 billion, almost entirely from API calls.

KEY DATA

130 millionMonthly Active Users
$1 billionAnnualized Revenue
475 million yuanRevenue for First Seven Months
715 million yuanNet Loss for First Seven Months

PHYSIX OBSERVATION

The creation of the Product Division is not about immediately charging its 130 million users, but about preparing a credible consumer monetization roadmap for an IPO. A 20.3% year-over-year decline in monthly active users shows the free-tier moat is loosening, but directly copying a ChatGPT subscription could accelerate churn. A more likely path is extending from API tiering into Agent value-added services, charging for deep-usage scenarios rather than for basic chat.

Source: TMTPost report