DeepSeek Financing Deal Approved: $7.4 Billion—Liang Wenfeng Personally Puts Up 200 Billion to Take Control, While the National Fund Steps Back to a Supporting Role

DeepSeek’s first-round funding amount has been confirmed at about 50 billion RMB (7.4 billion USD), and the valuation cap has been raised to 5.9 billion USD. Founder Liang Wenfeng personally puts in 20 billion RMB, accounting for 40%, directly locking in control. Tencent is considering investing 10 billion RMB, and CATL is interested in contributing 5 billion RMB, becoming the largest external investor.
(Backgrounder: DeepSeek’s first round raised 7.35 billion USD, outpacing Alibaba! Only “the least conditional” money)
(Background addition: DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng’s net worth is topping 126 billion USD—could he be richer than NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang?)

Details of Chinese language-model unicorn DeepSeek’s first-round funding have been released. The total is about 50 billion RMB (7.4 billion USD), with the valuation range landing between 350 billion and 400 billion RMB (52 billion to 59 billion USD). The upper end is pushed one step higher than rumors at the end of May.

From TechCrunch’s first report in early May that valued it at 45 billion USD, to mid-month rumors of 51.5 billion USD, then 55 billion USD at month-end, and to 59 billion USD today—DeepSeek’s valuation has been jumping every few weeks.

Liang Wenfeng invests 20 billion—at his own expense

The highlight of this round is that founder Liang Wenfeng has pledged to personally invest 20 billion RMB, exactly 40% of the total funding. One reason is to ensure the founding team is not diluted; Liang Wenfeng currently holds 84% of DeepSeek’s shares.

Originally, there were rumors that a national AI industry investment fund would lead the investment, but with the founder putting in money himself, the national fund has stepped back to become a standard co-investment institution. This swap in positioning means DeepSeek’s funding logic is “steering itself with its own funding,” rather than relying on government endorsement.

Among external investors, Tencent is considering investing 10 billion RMB, and CATL is interested in investing 5 billion RMB—together accounting for the vast majority of external investment.

DeepSeek is also conducting final negotiations with NetEase and JD.com, with the total number of participating investors expected to be fewer than 10. Hong Kong’s IDG Capital and Monolith Capital are also on the potential list.

API price cut

DeepSeek V4-Pro has recently announced a permanent price reduction for its API. The output costs less than TWD 30 per million tokens, making it among the most aggressive pricing tiers among current mainstream large models. Another track is that four core researchers have been poached by external organizations such as Google DeepMind; the outside world has interpreted this as one of the triggers for launching the funding.

Behind DeepSeek is quant hedge fund giant High-Flyer. Liang Wenfeng, born in 1985, graduated from Zhejiang University, and shifted from quantitative arbitrage to building large models.