tencent holdings and alibaba group are in talks to invest in the ai startup deepseek. if the deal goes through, deepseek’s valuation will exceed us$20 billion, equivalent to approximately rmb 136.7 billion. this would mark deepseek’s first external funding round since its founding. earlier reports indicated that the company had sought to raise us$300 million at a valuation of at least us$10 billion.
deepseek is owned by the chinese quantitative hedge fund fangzheng quant, which was co-founded by liang wenfeng in 2023. in january 2025, the company unveiled a model that sent shockwaves through the industry and has since released a series of new models at a rapid pace. by adopting a low-cost, open-source approach, deepseek has differentiated itself from u.s. firms such as openai and anthropic.
both alibaba and tencent have recently stepped up their ai initiatives. earlier this month, alibaba unveiled a new model capable of generating 3d environments and interactive videos, and last month completed a restructuring that consolidated its ai services and r&d into a single business unit. meanwhile, tencent announced that it will increase its ai spending to more than rmb 36 billion this year, doubling its current level. according to a bloomberg report in march, deepseek is expanding and has posted more than a dozen job openings related to ai agents, positioning itself to directly compete with rivals such as openclaw.
