Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is considering outside funding for the first time. According to The Information, the company is in talks to raise at least 300 million USD at a valuation of 10 billion USD. The publication's report is cited by Reuters and Quartz.

Until now, DeepSeek has rejected offers from Chinese venture capital firms and major tech companies, avoiding outside capital. If the deal goes through, it would be the first such deal in the company's history. DeepSeek did not respond to Reuters' request for comment.

Attracting investment could be complicated by a number of factors. Potential American investors could be deterred by the startup's Chinese jurisdiction. DeepSeek's relations with American chipmakers are creating particular tension: in February 2026, Reuters reported that the company trained its latest model on Nvidia's advanced Blackwell chips, circumventing US export restrictions. Furthermore, OpenAI accused DeepSeek of illegally using its own technology to train AI models, and Anthropic accused it of stealing data from its chatbot, Claude.

DeepSeek was founded in 2023 in Hangzhou. The company attracted widespread attention in the tech community after releasing a preview version of the R1 model with reasoning capabilities in November 2024 and the full version in January 2025. In December of that year, the startup unveiled the V3.2 series of models, capable of solving problems from international programming and mathematics competitions at gold medal level.