DeepSeek's giant round, IMC 2026 day one, and a pricey bet on local-AI PCs
DeepSeek's reported raise nearly doubles, India Mobile Congress opens in Delhi, and Microsoft pitches local AI on the PC. Plus a Mac volume trick and why dark mode isn't saving your battery.
- Long Press · Daily Five7 Oct 202601 / 05
commentaryDeepSeek's reported $12-15B round nearly doubles its target
DeepSeek is reportedly raising $12-15 billion, close to double the roughly $7 billion it first set out to raise, with Tencent and CATL among the biggest backers according to Bloomberg. Much of it is earmarked for compute, including 160,000 Huawei accelerators at a data centre in Inner Mongolia. For anyone building products in India, the more useful number is the price of its open-weight V4.1 Flash model: $0.30 per million input tokens.
The problem
Frontier AI is getting more capable and more expensive at the same time, and most of the best models are closed and priced in dollars. That squeezes small teams, including a lot of Indian startups, who need decent models at a cost that survives a rupee invoice.
What changed
Bloomberg reported on October 6 that DeepSeek's round has grown to 80-100 billion yuan ($12-15 billion), well above its 50 billion yuan target, with Tencent and CATL among the largest investors. The money goes into compute and new models, and the company is also reported to be preparing for a possible IPO. Its V4.1 Flash, released in September, is a 748-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model with open weights, a 1-million-token context window and API pricing of $0.30 in and $1.20 out per million tokens.
The catch
DeepSeek's headline coding result, 74.2% on DeepSWE against 74.0% for Anthropic's Opus 5, comes from its own technical report, and independent validation hadn't been published as of this week. Funding figures are from unnamed sources and haven't been confirmed by the company.
What it means for you
If you're paying for API calls, it's worth running your own task on V4.1 Flash next to whatever you use now, and you can self-host the weights if data residency matters. Just judge it on your workload, not the leaderboard screenshot.
- Long Press · Daily Five7 Oct 202602 / 05
newsIndia Mobile Congress 2026 opens today in Delhi
India Mobile Congress 2026 opens today at Yashobhoomi in Delhi and runs until October 10 under the theme Scale Without Boundaries. There will be plenty of 6G demos and a third Bharat 6G Symposium, which are fun but years away from your phone. The two tracks that matter more for regular users are satellite internet and 5G monetisation, which is the industry's polite phrase for getting more money out of each subscriber.
The problem
Indian telcos spent heavily on 5G and are still looking for a way to earn it back, while satellite broadband keeps getting promised to areas that fibre and towers never reached. Both questions end up on your monthly recharge or your village's connectivity, not on a stage.
What changed
The 10th India Mobile Congress, organised by the Department of Telecommunications and the COAI, runs October 7-10 at the India International Convention and Expo Centre in Dwarka. It has four tracks covering 6G and AI-native networks, 5G monetisation and satcom, green telecom, and cybersecurity, plus summits on satcom, quantum and security. Visitor and student passes are free, and delegate passes cost Rs 20,000-25,000.
The catch
IMC is mostly a showcase, and big announcements here are often demos or MoUs rather than products with dates and prices. Expect to see 6G in a booth long before it shows up in a spec sheet.
What it means for you
Skip the 6G hype and watch for anything said about satellite internet pricing and 5G plan changes this week, since that's what reaches your bill. If you're in Delhi, the free visitor pass gets you into the expo floor.
- Long Press · Daily Five7 Oct 202603 / 05
tipHold Option + Shift for 64 volume steps on a Mac
On a Mac, hold Option and Shift while you press the volume or brightness keys and each press moves a quarter of a normal step, so the usual 16 levels become 64. It's the fix for that late-night call where one notch is too loud and the one below it is basically silent, and it works for screen brightness in a dark room too.
The problem
Mac volume and brightness keys jump in 16 fairly big steps. At night, or with sensitive earphones, the gap between two of those steps can be the difference between too loud and inaudible.
What changed
macOS has a long-standing modifier for this: hold Option + Shift and press the volume up/down or brightness up/down keys, and each press moves a quarter step. The on-screen indicator shows the finer movement as you go.
The catch
It needs the dedicated volume and brightness keys, so on an external keyboard without them you're back to Control Centre's slider. It doesn't do anything for apps that manage their own volume separately.
What it means for you
Try it next time you're on a call with earphones in. Once you've used it a few times, the regular steps feel clumsy.
- Long Press · Daily Five7 Oct 202604 / 05
hot takeA $4,000 laptop for local AI is a hard sell
Microsoft is in San Francisco today to talk about how local AI will shape the next chapter of the PC, with Satya Nadella and Nvidia's Jensen Huang on the same stage. The likely hardware star is the Surface Laptop Ultra with Nvidia's RTX Spark chip, which still has no price. Local AI is good for privacy and for developers. For most people it's a very expensive way to avoid a $20 subscription.
The problem
Windows has spent two years selling AI features that people didn't ask for, and Recall turned 'AI on your PC' into a trust problem. Microsoft needs a reason for people to buy new PCs that isn't just a Copilot key.
What changed
Microsoft's October 7 event features Nadella, Windows chief Pavan Davuluri and Jensen Huang. The Surface Laptop Ultra was shown in June with a 15-inch mini-LED display, Nvidia's RTX Spark chip with 20 Arm CPU cores and up to 128GB of unified memory, but pricing and release date are still pending. Engadget expects $3,999 or more, which would be well above Rs 3.5 lakh in India, and Microsoft is also expected to talk about agentic AI built into Windows.
The catch
Pricing is a press estimate, not official, and Microsoft may announce cheaper local-AI hardware alongside the flagship. If the Windows agent features turn out to be good and genuinely private, the pitch looks better than it does from here.
What it means for you
Unless you run models for work, don't buy a laptop for local AI this year. What I'd watch from tonight is whether Windows agents can do useful work without asking you to trust them with everything on your screen.
- Long Press · Daily Five7 Oct 202605 / 05
myth busterDark mode barely saves battery at normal brightness
Dark mode isn't the battery fix people think it is. Purdue researchers measured it on OLED phones and found big savings only at full brightness, while at the 30-50% brightness most of us actually use the gain was a few percent. On LCD screens it does close to nothing. Keep it because it's easier on your eyes at night, and fix brightness and screen-on time if battery is the real complaint.
The problem
Dark mode got sold as a battery hack along with the night-time comfort, and a lot of people keep it on purely for the savings. If your phone is dying by evening, that belief points you at the wrong setting.
What changed
A 2021 Purdue University study of OLED phones found that switching from light to dark mode at 100% brightness cut display power by 39-47%. At 30-50% brightness, where auto-brightness keeps most phones indoors, the saving dropped to 3-9%. LCD panels light the whole screen with a backlight, so dark pixels save almost nothing there.
The catch
Your exact number depends on the app, how dark its theme really is and your screen, and if you live at max brightness outdoors the saving is real. The study measured display power, not total battery life, so the effect on your day is smaller still.
What it means for you
Use dark mode because you like it. For battery, turn down brightness or let auto-brightness work, cut screen-on time, and watch for weak-signal areas, which quietly burn more than any theme.