Until recently, DeepSeek were self-financed (it was a spin-out from a hedge fund). They just raised ~50million RMB (US$7bn), and according to media [0] (which admittedly can be unreliable), the lead investors were:
1) The CEO himself
2) Tencent
3) CALT (the battery company)
4) NetEase (internet/media company)
5) JD.com (ecommerce)
6) Chinese investment firms
What are they expecting in return? I'd say the same thing that all those investors in OpenAI and Anthropic are expecting - profit.
I don't think this question would get to the reason. There could be one or two persons in charge who simply shape the culture of the company, including how much to publish.
Does that figure hold up when we look at Silicon Valley financing? Uber alone was subsidized to the tune of billions. Let alone the recent batch where we're into hundreds of billions.
Even the latest World Bank report, the defacto neoliberal institution, recognized a couple of months ago that leaving the industries focus be dictaed by purely capital decisions was bad, as in _really_ bad.
Not everyone has the American “fuck you got mine” zero sum game attitude. Also they’re making some of the American and European AI companies look bad which they can leverage with their trades if they wanted to.
Edit: I'm a fan of deepseek and believe it's good to make the technology open/available. And do think that also help business - which I support as well.
Until recently, DeepSeek were self-financed (it was a spin-out from a hedge fund). They just raised ~50million RMB (US$7bn), and according to media [0] (which admittedly can be unreliable), the lead investors were:
1) The CEO himself 2) Tencent 3) CALT (the battery company) 4) NetEase (internet/media company) 5) JD.com (ecommerce) 6) Chinese investment firms
What are they expecting in return? I'd say the same thing that all those investors in OpenAI and Anthropic are expecting - profit.
[0] https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/vcpe/2026-06-11/doc-iniazi...
My understanding of Deepseeks raise is that it's basically do that they can give equity grants, as they were losing lots of people to competitors.
If they’re expecting profits like the VC backed US companies how come they behave so differently?
The investment round only closed in the last few weeks, it would have had zero influence on anything up to & including DeepSeek V4.
Whether that now changes, who knows. It appears the CEO will remain the largest investor/shareholder, though, so I'm hoping not much changes.
I don't think this question would get to the reason. There could be one or two persons in charge who simply shape the culture of the company, including how much to publish.
They are self financed, the company that makes DeepSeek is a finance company that trades on the markets.
The CCP's approach has historically been to subsidize their companies far more than other countries do. Why would LLMs be any different?
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/dashboards/magic-database-indus...
Access to everything every American company feeds into the AI is well worth it to the CCP.
According to EU statistics, yeah
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Does that figure hold up when we look at Silicon Valley financing? Uber alone was subsidized to the tune of billions. Let alone the recent batch where we're into hundreds of billions.
Even the latest World Bank report, the defacto neoliberal institution, recognized a couple of months ago that leaving the industries focus be dictaed by purely capital decisions was bad, as in _really_ bad.
Even if they were fully self-financed, which isn’t the case, they would expect something in return.
You can give them money by using their api. Just because their model is open, doesn’t mean they are a non profit.
Not everyone has the American “fuck you got mine” zero sum game attitude. Also they’re making some of the American and European AI companies look bad which they can leverage with their trades if they wanted to.
IMHO to promote that China believes in free markets and making the technology available to all.
Which will likely help them bolster the sales of the MANY new AI chips in development/use in China to international markets. Dislodging Nvidia.
Kinda the opposite of what Jensen Huang (Nvidia) thinks US is doing: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/u3SY8nvjhQA
Edit: I'm a fan of deepseek and believe it's good to make the technology open/available. And do think that also help business - which I support as well.
Edit 2: No idea why I'm getting downvoted. That's also their official stance https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202601/08/content_WS695f1b55...
Short AI companies
???
Profit!
Not suggesting this is it, but you know, one possible angle.