DeepSeek nears $45bn valuation as China’s ‘Big Fund’ leads investment talks

DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup that stunned the industry with its cost-efficient, open-weight models (DeepSeek-R1, V3), is reportedly in advanced talks to close its first external funding round at a staggering $45 billion valuation. According to reports from the Financial Times and Bloomberg, China’s National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund — colloquially known as the “Big Fund” — is in discussions to lead the round. This would mark one of the largest single AI investments ever, and the first time DeepSeek has taken outside capital since its founding in 2023.

The Big Fund, a state-backed entity established to boost China’s semiconductor self-sufficiency, has previously invested in SMIC, YMTC, and other chip giants. Its involvement signals Beijing’s strategic interest in DeepSeek as a national champion in AI foundation models. If the deal closes, DeepSeek’s valuation would exceed that of several Western AI labs (e.g., Mistral AI’s $6B, Cohere’s $5.5B) and approach Anthropic’s $18.4B and xAI’s $50B. The funding would fuel expansion of DeepSeek’s compute clusters (already using thousands of Huawei Ascend and Nvidia H100 chips) and accelerate development of next-gen models expected in late 2026.