Deepseek is on the verge of a 70 billion yuan (about 13.2 billion Singapore dollars) funding round that could value the startup at around $45 billion. Founder Liang Wenfeng told investors that he's putting basic AI research and the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) ahead of short-term profits, Bloomberg reports. Liang also plans to keep building open-source models.
Still, with more investor money comes more pressure to make money. Deepseek is working on something called "Deepseek Code," a potential competitor to Claude Code, which, alongside ChatGPT, is probably the most successful AI product on the market right now, especially for coding and B2B use cases.
Expected investors include China's state-owned National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund with about 10 billion yuan, along with Tencent, IDG Capital, and Monolith Capital. Talks are still ongoing, and details could change. The state's direct involvement fits a broader pattern of Beijing keeping a tight grip on the domestic AI industry.
Deepseek's valuation is still modest compared to OpenAI and Anthropic. Both leading Western AI labs are approaching the trillion-dollar mark.
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