Will DeepSeek Start Chasing ARR After Its First Funding Round?

Reporting by NUPIAO | Our Team

Edited by NUPIAO | Our Editors

Backed by Huaxing Quant, DeepSeek has long operated quietly away from the hype of primary markets, thanks to steady internal funding. But starting this year, whispers about external financing started popping up frequently.

On June 16, NUPIAO confirmed that DeepSeek closed its first external funding round, raising over 50 billion RMB (around $7.4 billion). Post-money valuation now sits comfortably above $50 billion (roughly 338 billion RMB).

According to sources close to the deal, founder Liang Wenfeng personally pitched in around 20 billion RMB, taking the lead as the single biggest backer. Tencent came in with roughly 10 billion RMB, while the CATL ecosystem (including CATL and Puquan Capital) contributed about 5 billion. NetEase, JD.com, Monolith Capital, and IDG Capital each put in around 3 billion. Zhengxingu Investment and Shixiang Technology rounded things out with approximately 1.5 billion apiece.

When asked why they jumped in, multiple investors told NUPIAO that securing top-tier talent and scaling compute capacity were the main drivers.

It’s worth noting that between late 2025 and mid-2026, several key DeepSeek engineers packed their desks for bigger tech players or leading AI startups. For instance, Guo Daya, a core researcher behind DeepSeek-R1, moved to ByteDance’s Seed division. Wang Bingxuan, a primary architect of their first-gen LLM, joined Tencent’s Hunyuan project. Meanwhile, Luo Fuli, a key developer for DeepSeek-V2, headed over to Xiaomi’s MiMo team.

Sure, earlier reports pointed to stable numbers—out of 391 researchers, only 25 had left, and even among the top 15 most cited authors, just two walked away. The core team seems solid and growing. But let’s be real: without competitive equity packages or bonuses, holding onto star engineers is becoming an uphill battle.

One former engineer who’s since launched their own startup told me directly: part of why they left was simply to chase better career trajectories and financial upside.

Now that DeepSeek finally has a clear market price tag, those stock options are no longer just theoretical. This transparency could be the game-changer needed to lock in key contributors and align everyone’s incentives.

But once you’re sitting at a multi-billion-dollar valuation, a nagging question pops up: should DeepSeek play catch-up with global competitors and start aggressively pushing commercialization to chase ever-growing ARR?

Short answer? Probably not. The latest deal sheet reveals some telling details. Investors aren’t buying shares directly from DeepSeek; instead, they’re routing capital through a limited partnership managed by Liang Wenfeng. Plus, every single stake comes with a hard five-year lockup.

If these terms hold water, it screams one thing: Liang wants to keep a tight grip on the wheel. He’s clearly not in a rush to pump the valuation sky-high overnight—a move that usually requires aggressive sales cycles and heavy commercial push.

On top of that, the company isn’t bleeding cash. An industry insider close to the operation shared that DeepSeek’s API margins have consistently stayed positive. “It’s not a massive number yet, but as long as it stays profitable, there’s zero rush to scale up sales operations,” they noted.

Looking ahead to the next wave of base model wars, that half-trillion RMB stash is widely considered more than enough runway. “You’re looking at max $300–500 million a year in burn rate. A single training run today already costs tens of millions,” the investor explained. By keeping sales teams lean right now, DeepSeek sidesteps bloated overhead, letting the crew stay focused purely on model innovation.

Here’s the catch: when the founder holds all the cards and revenue streams are still sketchy, predicting how big DeepSeek can actually grow—or what valuation ceiling it can hit—is pure guesswork. For VC firms chasing quarterly returns, that uncertainty demands serious caution. Even for a name like DeepSeek.

Word from a well-placed source is that DeepSeek actually shopped the deal to several other top-tier dollar funds too. None of them made the final cap table. “That alone tells us plenty,” the source added. “A lot of firms simply weren’t sold on the terms or the price tag.”