DeepSeek valuation jumps to $45B in first VC round

Chinese AI lab DeepSeek is in talks to raise its first venture capital round, with its valuation soaring from $20 billion to $45 billion in weeks, according to Financial Times and Bloomberg. Founded by hedge fund billionaire Liang Wenfeng, who holds nearly 90% of the company, DeepSeek gained prominence in early 2025 after releasing a large language model trained at a fraction of the cost and compute power of US rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. It has since kept pace in reasoning and coding while remaining open weight. Facing poaching of its researchers, Liang decided to raise funds to offer employees shares. The round is reportedly led by state investment vehicle China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, with cloud giants Tencent and Alibaba also in talks. DeepSeek is optimized for Huawei Technologies chips, positioning it as a key player in China's push for AI self-sufficiency amid US chip restrictions.