Chinese technology company DeepSeek secured more than $7.4 billion in its first funding round, pushing its valuation to over $50 billion, The Information reported on Tuesday.
Under the new deal, investors must put their capital into a limited partnership spearheaded by DeepSeek founder and CEO Liang Wenfeng rather than investing directly in the company, according to The Information. DeepSeek is now ranked as the most valuable artificial intelligence startup company in China, The Wall Street Journal reported.
This new arrangement aims to ensure Liang can maintain total control over DeepSeek, The Information reported.
The arrangement also imposes a five-year lock-up period on all investors’ shares during which they cannot sell their stakes, per The Information’s report. China’s National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, which is investing 1 billion yuan directly into DeepSeek, is the sole investor that is exempt from not being able to sell its stakes during that time period, according to the outlet.
DeepSeek did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
In January 2025, DeepSeek gained international recognition after it released its mobile chatbot application and the large language model DeepSeek-R1, according to Britannica Money. DeepSeek notably became the most downloaded app on Apple’s U.S. app store by Jan. 27, 2025 and was also one of the top downloads on the Google Play store.
A chatbot refers to a computer program or application that human users can speak with using voice or text, according to Amazon Web Services.
Liang told potential investors that he plans to continue creating new open-source AI models while also aiming to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), Bloomberg reported in May, citing an anonymous source familiar with the matter. AGI is a hypothetical type of AI that can match or surpass humans’ cognitive abilities, according to IBM.
An April 2025 report by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party alleged that DeepSeek “represents a profound threat to our nation’s security.”
“Although it presents itself as just another AI chatbot, offering users a way to generate text and answer questions, closer inspection reveals that the app siphons data back to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), creates security vulnerabilities for its users, and relies on a model that covertly censors and manipulates information pursuant to Chinese law,” according to the committee’s report.
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