DeepSeek Finally Takes Outside Money — $45B First Round
The company that spent two years saying it didn't need VC just doubled its valuation in three weeks. China's Big Fund — the state semiconductor vehicle — is leading DeepSeek's first ever funding round at a $45 billion valuation, with Tencent and Alibaba reportedly in talks to co-invest. Three weeks ago the figure floating around was $20B.
Why now? Liang Wenfeng, the hedge fund billionaire who controls nearly 90% of the company, was getting his researchers poached. Founders' equity is binary — you either own 90% of the company and refuse to dilute, or you raise and offer ESOP. He picked the second.
The strategic spine is more interesting. China Big Fund leading is the first time a state vehicle has anchored a frontier-model round, and DeepSeek runs on Huawei chips, not NVIDIA. So this is "homegrown stack from compute to model" being capitalized at $45B by Beijing — a structural answer to U.S. chip restrictions, not just a financing round. The "we don't need money" stance was the brand; this round is the moment that brand officially ends.
Compare to Anthropic's compute book over the past two months — Amazon 5GW, Google+Broadcom, Microsoft+NVIDIA $30B, Fluidstack, SpaceX. The supply-side diversification thesis is now playing on both sides of the Pacific, with very different counterparties.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/06/deepseek-could-hit-45b-valuation-from-its-first-investment-round/
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Why now? Liang Wenfeng, the hedge fund billionaire who controls nearly 90% of the company, was getting his researchers poached. Founders' equity is binary — you either own 90% of the company and refuse to dilute, or you raise and offer ESOP. He picked the second.
The strategic spine is more interesting. China Big Fund leading is the first time a state vehicle has anchored a frontier-model round, and DeepSeek runs on Huawei chips, not NVIDIA. So this is "homegrown stack from compute to model" being capitalized at $45B by Beijing — a structural answer to U.S. chip restrictions, not just a financing round. The "we don't need money" stance was the brand; this round is the moment that brand officially ends.
Compare to Anthropic's compute book over the past two months — Amazon 5GW, Google+Broadcom, Microsoft+NVIDIA $30B, Fluidstack, SpaceX. The supply-side diversification thesis is now playing on both sides of the Pacific, with very different counterparties.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/06/deepseek-could-hit-45b-valuation-from-its-first-investment-round/
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