In the race for global hegemony in Large Language Models (LLMs) for artificial intelligence (AI), the American companies OpenAI and Anthropic , valued at US$852 billion and US$380 billion respectively, have bolstered their foundations with investments from major US tech companies such as Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Alphabet.
Now, the next company likely to use the same strategy to advance on this map is DeepSeek , the Chinese startup that, in early 2025, shook up this market by announcing an AI model with performance similar to that of American companies, but at much lower costs.
According to The Information , the company is in negotiations to raise capital that, in a similar strategy to its US rivals – but with a local twist – should include the participation of two Chinese technology giants: Alibaba and Tencent .
According to sources close to these discussions cited by the publication, DeepSeek initially planned to raise at least US$300 million and achieve a valuation of at least US$10 billion.
However, given the significant interest generated by negotiations with these other potential investors, the startup is now seeking a valuation exceeding US$20 billion in what would be its first external funding round.
DeepSeek reportedly decided to debut in this arena due to the increasingly substantial amount of capital needed to continue developing AI models capable of competing with rivals.
This scenario, in turn, is unlikely to attract investors from countries like the United States. But it finds justification in its association with Chinese big tech companies, which also face the challenge of securing increasingly substantial investments to become key players in this competition.
Up to this point, the startup has operated using its own resources. In this case, the checks from High-Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese hedge fund that created the company in 2023 as an AI research lab connected to its operations.
As it gained momentum, DeepSeek was officially launched in early 2025. And, while it challenged rival models and triggered a global drop in tech stocks, it paved the way for other Chinese companies to advance in the LLM space.
These were the cases of companies like Baidu and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok. And, of course, also Tencent and Alibaba. In the case of the company founded by Jack Ma, the most recent package of moves involved, among other announcements, a new AI model, named Qwen3.6-Plus.
Similarly, Tencent has also invested in its own models and in integrating LLMs into its ecosystem, which includes tools like WeChat. In parallel, the group appointed Vinces Yao Shunyu, a former OpenAI executive, to lead its AI efforts.
