DeepSeek valuation surpasses $20 billion! Foreign media reports Tencent and Alibaba are competing to invest in the first round of financing.

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DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup that previously insisted on not taking external funding, has sparked a bidding war between Tencent and Alibaba with its first external financing round. Benefiting from intense market enthusiasm, its target valuation has exceeded $20 billion. However, behind the glamorous valuation, DeepSeek is facing triple pressure: the delayed launch of its flagship model V4, skyrocketing computing costs, and the loss of core talent. This massive influx of capital will be the critical ammunition for its survival in the AI death match. (Previous coverage: Anthropic's $1 Trillion, and DeepSeek's $10 Billion) (Background: US lawmakers propose "AI Theft Act," Chinese firms using distilled models face sanctions! DeepSeek and MiniMax listed as primary targets) China's AI sector is witnessing an unprecedented capital frenzy. DeepSeek, an open-source AI startup incubated by the private equity firm Huanfang Technology that long maintained a stance of "no external capital," has triggered a bidding war among China's top tech giants as soon as its first external financing plan was revealed. According to a report by The Information on Wednesday, citing four people familiar with the matter, Chinese tech giants Tencent and Alibaba are actively negotiating investments with DeepSeek. Due to the unprecedented market response following initial contact, DeepSeek's target valuation has soared from an initial floor of $10 billion to over $20 billion, with the overall financing scale expected to expand significantly. The report notes that DeepSeek is using another popular AI startup, Kimi, as a benchmark for part of its valuation — Kimi is currently closing a new round of financing at an $18 billion valuation. Looking at the performance of peers in the capital market, Zhipu, which listed in Hong Kong this January, has a market cap exceeding $50 billion, and MiniMax has surpassed $30 billion, suggesting that DeepSeek's actual potential value could be even more staggering. However, there is still fierce debate in the venture capital circle regarding its "pricing." Unlike peers that have begun commercial monetization, DeepSeek has so far positioned itself more as an AI lab dedicated to open-source technology. Its models are fully open-source, and its consumer-facing chatbot is completely free, with no substantial revenue generated yet. Negotiations are ongoing, and the final valuation and financing scale remain subject to change. DeepSeek's U-turn on financing cruelly reflects the extremely cash-burning survival environment of the current AI race. Although DeepSeek's previously released R1 model shocked the world with its extremely low training costs and performance comparable to top US systems, as the iteration speed of large models accelerates, this startup is facing severe internal pressure while being squeezed by well-funded tech giants in both China and the US: - Loss of core talent: Recently, several core researchers from DeepSeek have been poached by major domestic Chinese firms with high salaries. For example, key member Luo Fuli has officially joined Xiaomi to lead the MiMo team. - Flagship model delays: The next-generation flagship model V4, originally scheduled for release this February, has seen its timeline repeatedly pushed back due to thorny engineering challenges. The injection of external capital will provide DeepSeek with the much-needed "silver bullet" to procure computing resources on a large scale and stabilize its core technical team. For Tencent and Alibaba, this investment is not just a financial move, but a strategic consideration that is both defensive and offensive. Both giants have previously invested in top AI startups such as Zhipu, MiniMax, and MoonShot. As soon as the R1 model was released, Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance quickly integrated it into their existing products. Acquiring equity in DeepSeek not only hedges risks for the two companies' self-developed AI models but also opens a direct channel for deep cooperation. Especially for Tencent, which has lagged relatively behind in the independent R&D of cutting-edge foundation models, a strategic investment in DeepSeek is undoubtedly a key step to filling the gaps in its technical landscape.

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