DeepSeek is seeking new investment just weeks after raising $7 billion to fund its own data centres and purchase AI chips.
The Hangzhou-based lab closed its initial round in late May at a valuation of $52 billion. It is now in early discussions for a new round at a pre-money valuation of $71 billion. Founder Liang Wenfeng contributed roughly $3 billion of his own capital, making him the largest backer. Other investors include CATL, Tencent, JD.com, NetEase, and China’s state-backed AI fund.
The fresh capital will support an aggressive expansion strategy. DeepSeek recently released V4-Pro and V4-Flash, its largest open-weights models containing up to 1.6 trillion parameters. The rock-bottom pricing for V4-Pro has become permanent. Input costs for these models are roughly eleven times cheaper than GPT-5.5.
This approach is driving rapid adoption among US businesses. Financial services firm Ramp, which tracks spending across more than 50,000 companies, noted that DeepSeek was among the fastest-growing software vendors in June. Ramp flagged security risks, however, because firms are sending data directly through DeepSeek’s platform.
Performance gaps with Western leaders have widened. OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol and Anthropic‘s Claude Mythos have reached a new tier that DeepSeek cannot match yet. The difference in capability is far smaller than the difference in price.
Competition inside China is heating up fast. Zhipu AI released GLM-5.2, an open-source model that trails Anthropic’s Opus models by only a few percentage points on hours-long coding tasks and is gaining traction with enterprises. MiniMax is reportedly working on a 2.7 trillion-parameter model that could ship as early as Q3. Moonshot AI, the company behind Kimi, is looking for fresh capital at a valuation of up to $30 billion.
What it means
DeepSeek’s strategy relies on permanent low pricing to capture market share despite technical gaps. The company is moving away from relying solely on Nvidia and Huawei hardware by building its own inference chip. The intense domestic competition suggests a crowded market where cost efficiency will determine survival.
