en.Wedoany.com Reported - Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek is advancing its first external funding round, planning to raise approximately 50 billion yuan (about $7.4 billion), with a valuation target set between 350 billion and 400 billion yuan (about $52 billion to $59 billion). This funding scale contrasts sharply with Western competitors at similar stages of development: OpenAI's first funding round in 2019 was valued at $1 billion, while Anthropic raised $124 million at a $550 million valuation in 2021.

According to Reuters, investors in talks with DeepSeek include several major Chinese conglomerates. Tencent is considering investing 10 billion yuan, while global electric vehicle battery giant CATL is studying an investment of 5 billion yuan. NetEase, JD.com, and China's National AI Fund are also in final negotiation stages. If confirmed, Tencent and CATL would become DeepSeek's largest external investors. The round is expected to close within the next few weeks, though financial terms and the final investor list may still change. As of now, DeepSeek has not disclosed any IPO plans.

This funding could become one of the largest tech financings in China, marking a shift in strategy for the company founded by Liang Wenfeng. Previously, DeepSeek had avoided external capital, relying on the founder's own funds and profits from his quantitative hedge fund, High-Flyer. It is reported that Liang Wenfeng has committed to investing 20 billion yuan in the new round.

This move was not without warning. In April of this year, DeepSeek was already in talks for its first external funding round, planning to raise at least $300 million at a valuation target exceeding $20 billion. Interest from Chinese strategic investors, including Alibaba and Tencent, has already raised expectations surrounding the round.

DeepSeek shocked the industry in January 2025 when its chatbot R1 topped the Apple App Store download charts and entered the top ten of the Chatbot Arena, once seen as a challenge to the capital-intensive logic of the AI field. At the time, shares of U.S. chip-related companies fell amid market concerns that DeepSeek could deliver performance comparable to U.S. competitors at a fraction of the cost, reducing the need for massive spending on semiconductors and infrastructure. The company claimed its latest model cost only $5.6 million to train, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had estimated the cost of cutting-edge AI tools at between $100 million and $1 billion.

However, this massive funding round indicates that even with improved training efficiency, competition in distribution, talent, infrastructure, and new models still requires substantial capital. The industry itself has entered a new phase, with the race shifting from low-cost open-source chatbots to AI agents requiring greater computing power. DeepSeek's move suggests it needs to join this capital race, which it once seemed to challenge, to continue competing with OpenAI, Anthropic, Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent. In comparison, Anthropic raised $65 billion last month, while OpenAI raised $122 billion in March.

CATL's participation in this round also explains its new role in China's AI competition. The company, renowned for its global leadership in electric vehicle batteries, is advancing the construction of AI data centers, providing energy and storage solutions to handle intensive workloads. This investment connects two key areas: AI models and energy infrastructure. Tencent, meanwhile, is trying to close the gap with local rivals, with its Hunyuan model still lagging behind ByteDance's Doubao and DeepSeek. Building a close relationship with DeepSeek could help Tencent gain momentum in the AI field.

For DeepSeek, this is not just a venture capital round; it also reflects a new dimension of U.S.-China tech competition. After DeepSeek's V3 and R1 models gained global attention, it has become something of a national champion in Chinese AI. At the same time, Western restrictions on chip exports prevent the startup from accessing the most advanced U.S. semiconductors, limiting its hardware strategy and partly explaining why the funding may be concentrated within China, reinforcing its role in Beijing's agenda for technological self-reliance.

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