Over the past year, DeepSeek has remained the most unique company in China's large model industry.

It doesn’t resemble a standard startup. It’s not in a rush to secure financing, go public, or fit into the familiar narrative of the capital markets. While other companies are busy updating versions, pursuing commercialization, and vying for market share, DeepSeek has remained restrained. The impression Liang Wenfeng and DeepSeek have left on the outside world has always been clear: prioritize developing the technology first, and everything else can wait.

However, recently, a flurry of news has emerged surrounding DeepSeek's first round of financing. First, reports surfaced that DeepSeek was seeking at least $300 million in external financing, with a valuation of at least $10 billion. Subsequently, it was reported that Alibaba and Tencent were in talks with DeepSeek, with market valuations soaring above $20 billion. At the same time, another frequently mentioned piece of news is that DeepSeek V4, which the outside world has been waiting for, has yet to be officially released.

On the surface, this appears to be just another round of ordinary financing: a high-profile AI company begins raising funds, industry giants enter the scene, valuations rise, and market sentiment soars.

But what truly deserves attention is not whether DeepSeek will secure financing or who will ultimately invest, but rather another question: Why does a mere financing announcement cause the entire industry to quickly tense up? Why are people already lined up outside, eager to get in, even though the company has only just cracked open a door?

The answer is not complicated. Today, DeepSeek is no longer just a company in the ordinary sense. It is one of the few leading general-purpose large model companies in China that has not yet been fully locked down by capital or major corporations. It is also one of the few model companies that has proven its global influence while retaining its independence. Everyone knows that opportunities like this are rare and won’t wait indefinitely.

Two years ago, the discussion centered on whether China could develop large models. Today, the question has shifted to who will remain in the game, who will be valued by the market, and who can transform technological advantages into organizational and ecological strengths. DeepSeek happens to stand at the center of this transformation. On one hand, it remains one of the most representative technological samples of China's AI landscape. On the other hand, it is being drawn into a new phase where capital, talent, resources, and ecosystems are being reallocated.

So, no one wants to miss out on DeepSeek. On the surface, it’s because the company is valuable. Deeper down, it’s because the competition in China's AI sector is shifting strategies. In the past, the focus was on whether models could be developed. Today, the focus is on who can retain talent, sustain spending, stabilize systems, secure resources, and claim a position. When DeepSeek opens its door, everyone knows that a new phase of competition has begun.

01: Why No One Wants to Miss Out on DeepSeek

If DeepSeek is viewed merely as an AI company in the midst of financing, it’s easy to underestimate its current significance.

What truly makes it rare is not just the strength of its models but that it simultaneously meets several key conditions: it has proven its technological influence, garnered global attention, and holds symbolic significance as an independent entity. Moreover, to this day, it has not been truly locked down by any single party. It is the combination of these factors that has turned DeepSeek into a target that no one wants to miss.

First, consider its influence.

After the release of DeepSeek R1 in early 2025, perceptions of China's large models shifted noticeably. Many previously assumed that Chinese companies would lag behind U.S. firms in foundational models, especially given restrictions on high-end computing power, with the gap potentially widening over time. DeepSeek shattered not just a model benchmark but also a widely accepted notion: it proved that Chinese teams could develop globally competitive models without relying on the most expensive approaches.

More importantly, it has taken a rare path.

Over the past two years, many model companies have pursued speed, financing, valuations, and commercialization. DeepSeek is not without commercial pressures, but it has always given the impression of being a team methodically laying foundations rather than a company sprinting ahead. It doesn’t open too many doors, offer excessive explanations, or rush to deliver results to the market. This restraint alone sets it apart from most companies in the industry. People naturally perceive it not as just another AI company racing against capital timelines but as an exception.

An exception is a distinguishing trait in ordinary times; at critical moments, it becomes a premium.

Because a company not yet fully defined by capital yet already achieving world-class results is inherently seen as more valuable by the market. Its worth lies not just in today’s earnings or the amount it can raise but in its strong potential for imagination. For investors, this imagination implies future valuation flexibility; for major corporations, it means the company could become an ally or a disruptive variable; for the entire industry, it represents one of the few remaining samples proving that “China's AI still has other possibilities.”

Now, consider its rarity.

Among China's leading general-purpose large model companies, many are already moving toward the capital markets. Zhipu and MiniMax have completed their listings, Moonshot AI is advancing toward an IPO, and other top model companies are accelerating their capitalization. In contrast, DeepSeek is one of the few leading model companies that has not yet accepted external financing, has not explicitly aligned with any ecosystem, and has already achieved global influence.

When such a company begins to open its financing window, the market reaction is inevitably swift. Everyone understands that a company of DeepSeek's scale, Topic level (public interest), and symbolic significance won’t remain in limbo indefinitely. It will eventually enter the capital system, receive a market valuation, and align with a clearer position. The difference lies in who gets in first, who stays closer, and who secures a foothold while DeepSeek retains its independent imagination.

This is why, as soon as financing news about DeepSeek emerges, Alibaba, Tencent, investment firms, and public opinion immediately follow suit. Ultimately, no one wants to miss out on DeepSeek not because it’s a trendy company but because it may represent one of the most critical and scarce opportunities in China's AI industry at this stage.

02: Why Alibaba and Tencent Both Want to Invest

The reasons behind DeepSeek's high demand become more straightforward when viewed from the perspective of major corporations.

What Alibaba and Tencent truly care about is not the short-term financial returns from this investment but the potential loss of a crucial position in the AI era if DeepSeek is secured by others first. The financial gains lost would not be merely a few percentage points but a strategic foothold.

Investments amounting to several hundred million dollars are insignificant figures for Alibaba and Tencent. Moreover, securing a spot on the shareholder list of such a company holds far greater significance than financial returns.

Because as AI enters its next phase, model capabilities are no longer just about the models themselves—they are beginning to reallocate many other elements.

Models will determine whose cloud resources are more heavily utilized, who captures more enterprise clients, whose interfaces are more widely adopted by developers, and whose applications more easily integrate cutting-edge capabilities. Looking further ahead, models may even influence future entry points across various domains—office productivity, search, content, social media, e-commerce—and determine who is better positioned to capture AI-driven opportunities. Models, cloud services, clients, traffic, and applications are increasingly intertwined.

This means that when major corporations compete for DeepSeek, they are not just investing in a company but securing critical nodes in the future AI ecosystem.

For Alibaba, if DeepSeek can synergize with Alibaba Cloud, enterprise services, and development platforms, its position in AI infrastructure will become more stable. For Tencent, if top-tier model capabilities can integrate with its existing content, social, and application ecosystems, its entry-point advantages in the AI era will carry more weight.

Thus, this endeavor is not just about offense but also defense.

Offense is straightforward: whoever integrates DeepSeek into their ecosystem earlier gains the opportunity to tightly bind model capabilities with their cloud services, clients, channels, and interfaces. However, defense is even more critical. What major corporations fear most about DeepSeek is not its current strength but its independence. A sufficiently powerful model company that remains unclaimed is a significant variable—it could become an ally or the biggest future challenge for anyone.

From the perspective of major corporations, the logic is simple: securing an investment is ideal, but if they cannot, they at least want to prevent rivals from easily doing so. Once DeepSeek is locked down by another force, what is lost is not just a project but proactive control over a substantial portion of the future ecosystem.

This is also why DeepSeek's valuation expectations have rapidly escalated in a short time. The market is pricing not just the company's current worth but also the scarcity of its position. This price reflects technological capabilities, industry imagination, and the potential for gaining an early advantage in the future AI landscape.

So, why do Alibaba and Tencent both want to invest in DeepSeek? The answer is straightforward: because everyone knows this is not an ordinary opportunity but one that, once missed, may be difficult to recover.

03: Why DeepSeek Had to Open This Door

If outsiders don’t want to miss DeepSeek because of its scarcity, the reasons behind DeepSeek’s decision to open a crack in the door at this moment are more pragmatic.

It’s not because the company suddenly had a change of heart but because its previous way of operating has become increasingly costly.

In the past, DeepSeek could maintain its independence largely because it was supported by High-Flyer Quantitative Trading. Unlike many startups that inherently rely on financing to survive, DeepSeek didn’t need to constantly justify its commercialization progress to investors. This allowed it to sustain a rare state: a stronger research atmosphere, lighter commercialization pressures, and a pace less resembling that of a standard startup.

However, today, this state is encountering boundaries.

The most direct pressure comes from talent.

In today’s AI industry, the competition hinges on top researchers and engineers. DeepSeek previously attracted talent through technological ideals, organizational culture, and opportunities for original contributions. These factors were valid then, but now, the industry’s conditions for top talent have become increasingly clear: higher salaries, more valuable stock options, and clearer exit paths. From late 2025 to early 2026, DeepSeek saw the departure of several core R&D leaders, including Guo Daya, Wei Haoran, Wang Bingxuan, Ruan Chong, and Luo Fuli, spanning critical technical areas such as base models, reasoning, OCR, and multimodal capabilities. For a company that relies on talent density, this is not ordinary turnover but an organizational issue.

And organizational issues ultimately boil down to a very practical point: stock options need a price.

Whether a startup can retain talent with stock options hinges on employees understanding their approximate value. If a company refrains from financing for extended periods, lacks external valuations, and has no market price, many equity and option grants may end up as vague promises. When external opportunities are scarce, this isn’t the biggest problem. However, when the industry is aggressively poaching talent with higher offers, such ambiguous incentives become increasingly difficult to sustain. For DeepSeek, one practical effect of financing is to provide the company with a market price, give the team clear expectations, and ensure that stock options are no longer just “potentially valuable in the future” but “approximately valuable now.”

The second pressure comes from capital expenditures.

The most significant costs for large model companies today are no longer just training a model once but the lengthy, heavier tasks that follow: inference services, continuous iteration, long-context processing, multimodal capabilities, agent functionalities, infrastructure stability, and adaptations to underlying code and chips. Although DeepSeek has appeared quiet recently, it hasn’t stopped advancing. Its ongoing work on long-sequence processing, conditional memory, sparse attention, and its highly anticipated adaptations to Huawei’s Ascend chips demonstrate its continued push into deeper, more engineering-heavy domains.

Such efforts may not be flashy, but they are resource-intensive.

Especially if DeepSeek aims to deeply adapt to domestic chips, it’s not a simple hardware swap but requires reworking, retuning, and reinvesting engineering efforts into many underlying components. Such investments are not only costly but also time-consuming, with few immediately visible results for outsiders. Yet, they are indispensable for competing in the next phase.

The third pressure arises from changes in industry pace.

Today’s competition in large models has shifted from “building a model” to “running a system.” Model performance is one aspect; service stability, inference supply, application deployment, and system scalability are another. Since the start of 2026, DeepSeek has experienced multiple large-scale service disruptions, including one instance where both its web and app platforms were unavailable for approximately 12 hours. For a model company already at the industry’s center, this indicates not just technical failures but mounting pressure on its entire system and resource investments.

Ultimately, DeepSeek’s decision to open its financing window today stems not from a sudden desire to align with peers but from the growing difficulty of sustaining the next round of competition solely through independence and a research-focused atmosphere.

This is also the core challenge Liang Wenfeng faces. Outsiders may ask whether DeepSeek will ultimately take money from Alibaba, Tencent, or neither. For him, the hardest question isn’t about the source of funding but whether DeepSeek can remain the same company after capital enters. Accepting money from major corporations brings more resources and a thicker safety net but inevitably redefines independence. Taking pure financial investment preserves more independence but may not address the most critical resource gaps. Ultimately, the choice isn’t about selecting an investor but about determining what kind of company DeepSeek will become.

Thus, this situation reveals more than just why no one wants to miss DeepSeek. More importantly, it shows that even DeepSeek itself has reached a point where it can no longer remain stationary. In the past, the primary task for Chinese AI companies was to prove they could build models. Now, the more pressing task is to prove they can remain in the game long-term after achieving that milestone.

Technological breakthroughs can make a company visible, but only through valuation, organization, and resource support can it continue moving forward. DeepSeek’s financing signifies not just a change for Liang Wenfeng but a shift in the survival rules of China's entire AI industry.

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