DeepSeek has spent eighteen months as the most talked-about AI lab that almost nobody could invest in. That is about to change. The Chinese startup is slated to raise roughly 50 billion yuan, about $7bn, in its first external funding round, according to people familiar with the matter, in a deal that would value it at between $52bn and $59bn.
The composition of the round is as telling as the size. Founder Liang Wenfeng is committing 20 billion yuan of his own money, a controlling share of the raise that keeps him firmly in charge of a company he has run with unusual independence.
Tencent is weighing about 10 billion yuan and battery giant CATL around 5 billion yuan, which would make them the largest outside backers. Hong Kong’s IDG Capital and Monolith Capital are also among the prospective investors. The round is expected to close within weeks.
That a founder is funding a quarter of his own mega-round is not how Silicon Valley does things, and it is rather the point. DeepSeek emerged from High-Flyer, the quantitative hedge fund Liang built, and has been bankrolled largely from that base.
Taking outside capital changes the company’s character. It formalises DeepSeek as a commercial entity with investors to answer to, after a period in which it behaved more like a research project that happened to ship.The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
