DeepSeek, the AI lab founded by Liang Wenfeng, has relied on his hedge fund High-Flyer Quant for early funding and computing power, but is now courting outside investors as its needs expand. Meanwhile, High-Flyer's affiliates have taken sizable pre-IPO stakes in Chinese hard-tech firms like memory chipmaker CXMT and robotics company Unitree, even as volatility in AI and chip stocks has hit the fund's returns.
Nvidia announced hardware optimizations for popular Chinese open-source AI models, including DeepSeek's V4 Flash and Alibaba's Qwen 3.8, as part of a broader push to support open-weight systems. Alongside the announcement, an SEC filing tied to its quarterly earnings warned that potential White House restrictions on Chinese-origin AI could hurt its business by limiting its ability to support apps built on those models.
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, based in Hangzhou, is said to be raising fresh capital that would value the company at roughly $74 billion. The funds are intended to support research and development along with an expansion of its computing infrastructure.