DeepSeek on track for $45B valuation after first funding round
▼ Summary
– DeepSeek is negotiating its first venture capital round, with its valuation surging from $20 billion to $45 billion in weeks.
– The Chinese AI lab gained attention in early 2025 for launching a cost-efficient LLM trained with less compute power than U.S. rivals.
– Founder Liang Wenfeng, who owns nearly 90% of the company, decided to raise funds to prevent poaching by offering employees shares.
– The round is reportedly led by a Chinese state investment fund, with Tencent and Alibaba also in talks to participate.
– DeepSeek is optimized for Huawei chips, supporting China’s goal to develop homegrown AI and reduce reliance on U.S. technology.
DeepSeek is reportedly in discussions to secure its first-ever venture capital funding, and the company’s estimated value has skyrocketed from $20 billion to $45 billion in just a matter of weeks, according to reports from the Financial Times and Bloomberg.
The Chinese AI lab first captured global attention in early 2025 when it introduced a large language model that was trained using a fraction of the computing power and at a much lower cost compared to leading U. S. models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Since then, DeepSeek has managed to stay competitive with top-tier models in areas such as reasoning and coding, all while maintaining an open-weight approach , meaning its versions are freely available on platforms like Hugging Face.
Founded by Liang Wenfeng, a Chinese hedge fund billionaire who holds nearly 90% ownership of the company, DeepSeek had previously avoided seeking outside investors, the Financial Times reports. However, as competitors began poaching its researchers, Liang decided to raise capital in order to offer equity to employees, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Bloomberg reports that the funding round is expected to be led by the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, a state-backed investment vehicle. China is aggressively funding homegrown AI technology to reduce its reliance on U. S. hardware, particularly advanced chips. DeepSeek has been optimized to run on chips produced by China’s domestic hardware giant Huawei Technologies. This combination is seen as a powerful alliance for the nation as it works to develop AI capable of rivaling the United States. Additionally, Chinese cloud giants Tencent and Alibaba are reportedly in talks to join the round, per Bloomberg.
DeepSeek could not be reached for comment at the time of reporting.
(Source: TechCrunch)
