DeepSeek $10 billion Mega Funding Enters Late-Stage Negotiation, Winston Liang Vows Focus on AGI and Open Source

According to Insightful Beating monitoring, DeepSeek is currently in the final stage of a massive funding negotiation amounting to as high as 700 billion Chinese Yuan (approximately $100 billion), surpassing the previously rumored 500 billion Yuan (about $73.5 billion) on May 8. This round of financing is progressing at a pre-money valuation of around $450 billion, with a post-money valuation set to rise to $550 billion.

Regarding the capital structure and investor tug-of-war, this funding round is displaying a new multi-party game. Earlier in early May, it was reported that the founder, Liang Wenfeng, planned to personally contribute up to 20 billion Yuan (about $30 billion, accounting for about 40% of this round) to ensure the team's absolute control, replacing the previously rumored lead investor, the National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, thereby expecting to become the second largest shareholder.

However, as of the latest update on May 22, with the expansion of the total financing amount, the luxury lineup of this round's investors has become clear: in addition to the National Fund and Liang Wenfeng's significant personal funds, a number of top-tier tech giants and leading venture capital firms, including Tencent Holdings, IDG Capital, and Monolith Capital, are close to confirming their participation in this round of investment, jointly forming a united front of "SOE + Tech Giants + Top VCs + Founder Team."

The DeepSeek management has shown a strong stance in the negotiations. Insiders revealed that Liang Wenfeng and the executive team have made firm commitments in multiple crucial meetings with investors: even if the company takes away tens of billions of dollars, they will firmly maintain achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as the core strategic objective, prioritizing resources towards open-source AI models and cutting-edge exploratory research, explicitly placing short-term commercialization and profit pressures in a secondary position.