DeepSeek gets its first outside funding, now worth over $50 billion

DeepSeek, an AI company based in Hangzhou, China, just closed its first round of outside funding, giving it a valuation of over $50 billion. The firm had always turned down outside money to focus on research, but changed its mind after losing some key team members.

Rumor has it that founder Liang Wenfeng asked investors not to poach DeepSeek employees or push them to start their own companies. A top researcher, Luo Fuli, left last year to join Xiaomi, where her team built AI models that now beat DeepSeek's in some tests.

Chinese companies are also hiring talent with overseas experience to boost AI research. Tencent, for example, brought in Yao Shunyu, who used to work at OpenAI, as its chief AI scientist. Both Liang and Yao have said China should aim to build artificial general intelligence (AGI).