{"id":541294,"date":"2026-06-18T08:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T08:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/541294\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T08:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T08:50:14","slug":"how-deepseeks-landmark-funding-secures-liang-wenfengs-grip-as-chinas-ai-rivalry-heats-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/541294\/","title":{"rendered":"How DeepSeek\u2019s landmark funding secures Liang Wenfeng\u2019s grip as China\u2019s AI rivalry heats up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek<\/a> closed its first-ever external fundraising in an unusual and high-stakes deal that could not only reshape the country\u2019s AI landscape but also offer a rare glimpse into how one of China\u2019s most valuable AI start-ups will navigate its next phase of growth, sources and analysts said.<\/p>\n

Hangzhou-based DeepSeek now has a post-investment value of about 400 billion yuan (US$59.2 billion) after raising around 50 billion yuan in a Series A round, one source with knowledge of the matter said.<\/p>\n

The deal made DeepSeek one of China\u2019s most valuable AI start-ups, surpassing the US$30 billion valuation of Moonshot AI and the US$17.7 billion market capitalisation of Hong Kong-listed MiniMax AI as of Wednesday\u2019s close, though still trailing Zhipu AI\u2019s US$95 billion market value.<\/p>\n

Contrary to earlier speculation that the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, commonly known as the Big Fund, would lead the round, Liang Wenfeng,<\/a> DeepSeek\u2019s low profile founder and CEO, emerged as the largest backer in the round with around 20 billion yuan out of his own pocket, making up nearly half of the total in an unusual arrangement.<\/p>\n

Liang\u2019s decision to lead the round would ensure he still steers the direction of the firm after bringing in external investors, as he remained committed to pursuing artificial general intelligence (AGI) \u2013 when AI matches human capabilities \u2013 a vision he reinforced to investors repeatedly during an online meeting last month, another source said.<\/p>\n

Liang told investors at the meeting that what \u201cDeepSeek wants to do is anything relevant to enhance the intelligence\u201d of AI models, and that it had no interest in anything else, the source added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek closed its first-ever external fundraising in an unusual and high-stakes deal that could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,6006,17211,289,290,1793,83023,381,8736,18,232364,19,17,26609,97711,24535,67474,307,82,1475,97707],"class_list":["post-541294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-anthropic","tag-artificial-general-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-beijing","tag-catl","tag-china","tag-deepseek","tag-eire","tag-high-flyer-quant","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jd-com","tag-liang-wenfeng","tag-moonshot-ai","tag-netease","tag-openai","tag-technology","tag-tencent","tag-zhipu-ai"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116770257375583186","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}