The FT, citing four people familiar with the talks, said negotiations are being led by China’s largest state-owned semiconductor investment vehicle, the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, known as the “Big Fund.”
DeepSeek’s valuation, which was about $20 billion just weeks ago, is expected to rise to about $45 billion (about 65.38 trillion won) after the funding, the report said, as investor interest has surged. China tech giant Tencent is also discussing joining the round, though the final list of investors has not been set.
DeepSeek gained worldwide notice in January last year after releasing its open-source large language model R1. The company said at the time the model was trained with far fewer computing resources than models from U.S. rivals such as OpenAI.
The FT said investors are betting on DeepSeek’s technical potential even though the company has not moved aggressively to commercialize its technology.
Founder Liang Wenfeng may also put personal money into the round, the report said. Company materials show Liang controls a total of 89.5% of DeepSeek through his personal stake and related companies.
If the Big Fund invests, it would bolster DeepSeek’s standing as a leading developer of advanced AI models in China and could add momentum to efforts to build a domestic ecosystem combining Chinese AI models and software with semiconductors.
The Big Fund was created to support China’s push for semiconductor self-reliance in response to U.S. technology controls. In raising its third fund in 2024, it collected $47 billion from China’s finance ministry, local governments and state-owned banks, with a focus on investing in semiconductor equipment and materials.
The fund has backed key Chinese chipmakers including foundry SMIC and memory chip producer YMTC, but it has not publicly invested in a Chinese large language model company.
DeepSeek has said its recently released V4 model was optimized to run on Huawei’s AI chips. With U.S. restrictions on advanced chip exports to China continuing, the reported investment is being seen as part of a broader push to speed up development of a homegrown AI-and-semiconductor ecosystem.
Separately, OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX are also reported to be preparing initial public offerings this year, a move expected to intensify competition among global tech companies to raise capital.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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