<div id="readability-page-1"><div> <p id="speakable-summary">DeepSeek is in talks to raise its first round of venture capital and, in just a few weeks, its potential valuation has soared from $20 billion to $45 billion, the Financial Times and Bloomberg reported.</p> <p>The Chinese AI lab came to prominence in early 2025 after launching a large language model that trained on a fraction of the compute power and at a fraction of the cost of the big U.S. models like those from OpenAI and Anthropic. It has since kept reasonable pace with the top models in the world in areas like reasoning and coding while remaining open weight (versions are freely available on Hugging Face).</p>   <p>Founded by Chinese hedge fund billionaire Liang Wenfeng, who controls nearly 90% of the company, the lab has not previously sought out investors, the FT reports. However, faced with competitors poaching DeepSeek’s researchers, Liang opted to raise funds in order to offer employees shares in the company, sources tell the FT.</p> <p>The round is said to be led by the state investment vehicle China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, Bloomberg reports. China is seeking to fund homegrown AI technology to sidestep the difficulty of obtaining U.S. technology, particularly chips. DeepSeek has been optimized to run on chips made by China’s hardware giant Huawei Technologies. That combo is considered a powerful duo for the nation to develop its own AI to rival the United States. The country’s cloud giants Tencent and Alibaba are also reportedly in talks to participate, per Bloomberg.</p> <p>DeepSeek could not be immediately reached for comment.</p>  </div></div>

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<p>DeepSeek is negotiating its first venture capital round, with its valuation potentially rising from $20 billion to $45 billion. The Chinese AI lab gained attention in early 2025 for its cost-effective large language model. Founded by billionaire Liang Wenfeng, DeepSeek aims to retain talent amid competition. The funding round may be led by the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, as China seeks to bolster its AI capabilities independently. Major players like Tencent and Alibaba are also considering participation.</p>

- DeepSeek is negotiating its first venture capital round, with its valuation rising from $20 billion to $45 billion within weeks.  
- Founded by hedge fund billionaire Liang Wenfeng, the Chinese AI lab aims to retain talent and compete globally, receiving backing from China's state investment fund and possibly Tencent and Alibaba.  
- DeepSeek's large language model operates efficiently on Huawei chips, as China aims to bolster domestic AI capabilities in response to restrictions on U.S. technology.

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DeepSeek could hit $45B valuation from its first investment round