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DeepSeek is in talks to raise $10B at a $45B valuation — the largest first-time fundraise by a Chinese tech startup. Founder Liang Wenfeng is focused on AGI, not short-term profit, as sovereign backers rush to fund China's open-source AI champion.
In what would be the largest first-time financing by a Chinese tech startup on record, Beijing-based DeepSeek is in advanced discussions to raise $10 billion (70 billion yuan) at a staggering $45 billion valuation, the Financial Times and Bloomberg reported.
The funding round, reportedly led by China's National Big Fund and attracting interest from major players including EV battery giant CATL, JD.com, and NetEase, underscores a major shift in the global AI landscape. While Western AI leaders increasingly focus on short-term monetisation and enterprise software integration, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng has explicitly told potential investors the company remains singularly focused on pushing the boundaries of artificial general intelligence (AGI).
The $45 billion valuation target represents a massive leap from the $10 billion valuation the company was reportedly seeking in April. This rapid escalation follows the global market shock triggered by DeepSeek's R1 model, which the company claims was trained for just $294,000 — a fraction of the cost incurred by its larger US rivals.
The company has also recently slashed prices, offering developers a 75% discount on model usage to aggressively capture market share and reignite a fierce AI price war in China.
"China is leveraging low power costs and a huge developer pool to treat AI tokens—basic data units processed by AI—as tradable assets. The 'industrial' approach to AI is being fueled by a surge in one-person firms using tokens to raise productivity." — Shirley Wong and Robert Lea, Bloomberg Intelligence
DeepSeek's approach — keeping its models open-source and its consumer chatbot free — has sparked debate among traditional venture capitalists about how to value a company shunning immediate revenue. However, with Asia AI software stocks climbing 11.3% this year and outpacing the US, sovereign and strategic investors appear more than willing to back DeepSeek's long-term AGI infrastructure play.
🔥DeepSeek Input Cache Price Drop!
— DeepSeek (@deepseek_ai) April 26, 2026
Effective immediately, the price for input cache hits across the ENTIRE DeepSeek API series is reduced to just 1/10th of the original price! Build more efficiently for less.
📌Reminder: The DeepSeek-V4-Pro 75% OFF promotion is still active… pic.twitter.com/glpUSyzqKy
Who is affected?
Global AI foundation model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google), enterprise developers seeking low-cost inference, and the broader semiconductor and cloud infrastructure supply chain.
The real cost of non-action vs. proactive leadership:
For Western AI companies, ignoring DeepSeek's low-cost, open-source trajectory risks losing the developer ecosystem to a highly subsidised competitor. For enterprise leaders, failing to evaluate open-source alternatives like DeepSeek means potentially overpaying for AI compute. Proactive leadership requires building multi-model architectures that can seamlessly route workloads to the most cost-effective provider without vendor lock-in.
What's Next to Review and Analyze?
Watch for the official close of this funding round, expected as early as June 2026. The participation of CATL — an EV battery manufacturer — signals that AI compute is increasingly being viewed as critical national infrastructure alongside energy and manufacturing. Analysts must also monitor whether DeepSeek's aggressive pricing strategy forces US providers to further subsidise their own API costs.
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