Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek is poised to raise its first external investment from China's national semiconductor investment fund, known as the Big Fund, according to foreign media reports. DeepSeek's valuation in the ongoing investment talks has been assessed at approximately $45 billion (about 65 trillion won).
The Financial Times reported Monday, citing sources, that the Big Fund is leading DeepSeek's funding round, with Chinese big tech investors including Tencent also in discussions to participate.
DeepSeek's valuation, previously cited at around $20 billion, has surged to the $45 billion level as investment negotiations have gained momentum. Analysts attribute the sharp rise in market expectations to DeepSeek's capabilities in developing high-performance AI models and its growth potential.
Sources said founder Liang Wenfeng is also considering participating in the investment in a personal capacity. Liang holds an 89.5 percent stake in DeepSeek through his personal and affiliated holdings.
The Big Fund is a strategic investment vehicle established by the Chinese government to counter U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductor equipment. Last year, it raised a total of 344 billion yuan (about 73 trillion won) from the central government, local governments and state-owned banks to form its third fund. However, it has not previously made a public investment in a large language model (LLM) developer.
The FT said DeepSeek's standing within China's AI industry would be further strengthened if the Big Fund backs the company. The move is also expected to promote China's "software, semiconductor and AI model ecosystem."
Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a recent podcast interview that "if DeepSeek comes out first on Huawei (AI chips), that would be a terrible outcome for our country (the United States)."
