ME AI Message, July 26 (UTC+8): According to Bloomberg, DeepSeek has announced a pause in its Series B funding round and verbally informed some potential investors that it will not proceed with signing the investment agreements as planned. This pause is partly due to founder Liang Wenhong’s dissatisfaction over the unauthorized leak of a four-hour internal transcript from its first funding round, during which he made 52 remarks covering DeepSeek’s organizational culture, open-source philosophy, technology roadmap, and views on industry competition. The nearly four-hour meeting transcript has recently gone viral on social media, including statements such as “The biggest gap between Chinese and U.S. AI is computing power resources.” Neither DeepSeek nor Liang Wenhong has confirmed the authenticity of the leaked transcript.
DeepSeek stated that it may still choose to resume the trading process in the future and has begun preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), which could be filed as early as this year.
DeepSeek completed its first round of external funding in June 2026, raising over RMB 50 billion (approximately $7.4 billion), with a post-money valuation of about $50–59 billion. The funding utilized a special structure, with the majority of capital allocated to a limited partnership managed by Liang Wenhong; investors have no voting rights and are subject to a five-year lock-up period. Liang Wenhong himself invested approximately RMB 20 billion, making him the largest contributor. Investors included Tencent, CATL, JD.com, NetEase, and China’s National AI Fund. In mid-July, DeepSeek initiated discussions for its second funding round, targeting a valuation of approximately $71 billion. (Source: Bloomberg)