DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company that spent most of its existence bootstrapping on principle, apparently likes the taste of outside money. The startup is in discussions for a new funding round that would value it at $71 billion on a pre-money basis, according to the Financial Times.
That figure represents a staggering jump from the company’s post-money valuation of over $50 billion, which it hit just weeks ago after closing its first-ever external financing round in mid-June.
From bootstrapped to billions in record time
DeepSeek, founded by Liang Wenfeng, had historically refused outside capital. The company built its open-source large language models entirely without external investors.
That changed in 2026. In May, the company started shopping for its first outside capital, targeting valuations in the $45 billion to $50 billion range. By mid-June, it had closed a round raising over $7.4 billion.
