DeepSeek
About
DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence research lab headquartered in Hangzhou, founded in July 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, who built its computing base through his quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer. It is best known for the open-weight DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model, released in January 2025, which briefly topped Apple's US App Store free-download chart.
- CEO
- Liang Wenfeng
- Headquarters
- Hangzhou
- Founded
- 17 July 2023
- Website
- https://www.deepseek.com/
Overview
DeepSeek is a Hangzhou-based artificial intelligence lab founded on 17 July 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, who also co-founded and controls the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer, whose computing infrastructure underwrote the new venture. The company built its name on open-weight large language models released in rapid succession — DeepSeek Coder in November 2023, the DeepSeek-LLM series later that month, DeepSeek-V2 in May 2024 and DeepSeek-V3 in December 2024 — before DeepSeek-R1, launched 20 January 2025, briefly became the most-downloaded free app on Apple's US App Store, drawing global attention to a model reportedly trained far more cheaply than comparable US systems.
It followed with the DeepSeek-V4 series (April 2026), DeepSeek V4 Pro's general-availability update on 13 August 2026, and a V4.1 Flash model targeted for release around 10 September 2026.
Until mid-2026 DeepSeek had never taken outside capital: Liang Wenfeng controlled roughly 90% of the company personally. That changed with a first external funding round disclosed 17 July 2026, which raised about 50 billion yuan (US$7.4 billion) from roughly a dozen institutional investors — led by Tencent and CATL, with Liang himself contributing about 20 billion yuan of the total — at a post-money valuation of more than 350 billion yuan (about US$52 billion).
Weeks later, DeepSeek was reported to be in talks for a further round targeting a pre-money valuation near US$70– 74 billion, alongside preparations for a possible Shanghai STAR Market IPO as early as 2027.
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