alt Hacker NewsUntil recently, DeepSeek were self-financed (it was a spin-out from a hedge fund). They just raised ~50million RMB (US$7bn), and according to media [0] (which admittedly can be unreliable), the lead investors were:
1) The CEO himself 2) Tencent 3) CALT (the battery company) 4) NetEase (internet/media company) 5) JD.com (ecommerce) 6) Chinese investment firms
What are they expecting in return? I'd say the same thing that all those investors in OpenAI and Anthropic are expecting - profit.
[0] https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/vcpe/2026-06-11/doc-iniazi...
Replies
baxtr • today at 9:57 AM
If they’re expecting profits like the VC backed US companies how come they behave so differently?
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My understanding of Deepseeks raise is that it's basically do that they can give equity grants, as they were losing lots of people to competitors.