DeepSeek closes $50B funding round with China's national AI fund leading

DeepSeek is closing a round expected to value the Chinese AI lab at roughly $50 billion (>300B yuan), with China's national AI fund in talks to lead and Alibaba and Tencent rumored as potential co-investors. The raise underscores Beijing's strategic backing of homegrown AI as Huawei 950PR chips power V4 inference.