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DeepSeek Reportedly Halts Funding Round After Wenfeng's Comments
Liang Wenfeng told investors to hold off as the round targeted a 480 billion yuan valuation, Bloomberg reported.
- On Friday, DeepSeek suspended its second fundraising round, which targeted a pre-money valuation of roughly $71 billion, after private comments from founder Liang Wenfeng about Nvidia reliance went viral on Chinese social media.
- The pause followed a leaked transcript of a May meeting where Liang expressed frustration regarding China's dependence on Nvidia chips and the country's AI capability gap compared to the United States.
- During that meeting, Liang emphasized "restraint" as a core company vision, a principle reflected in DeepSeek's open-source model and low-margin pricing strategy.
- While DeepSeek did not officially confirm the transcript's authenticity, people familiar with the matter indicate the startup is preparing for a public listing as soon as this year.
- To address its dependency on Nvidia hardware subject to United States export restrictions, DeepSeek has been designing its own AI chip to reduce reliance on advanced processors.
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15 Articles
At the beginning of last year, when DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence laboratory, was sowing panic among its Western rivals, there was almost nothing known about Liang Wenfeng, its founder. Liang is still a mysterious figure, but at least one thing is clear: now that DeepSeek has closed a round of funding that values it at $71 billion, its founder's personal fortune has skyrocketed to reach around $38 billion, far ahead of Dario Amodei…
·Madrid, Spain
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Coverage Details
Total News Sources15
Leaning Left1Leaning Right3Center4Last UpdatedBias Distribution50% Center
Bias Distribution
- 50% of the sources are Center
50% Center
13%
C 50%
R 37%
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