DeepSeek told prospective investors it is suspending its second funding round, pausing a deal that would have valued the lab at about $71 billion. Bloomberg reported a verbal pause; the company may restart later.
Trigger: Liang Wenfeng frustration over leaked investor-meeting remarks on US-China AI competition and compute power. First round closed ~52B valuation with Tencent, CATL, and the National AI Industry Investment Fund. Second round talks began mid-July with ~37% step-up to ~$71B pre-money. Liang reportedly holds majority equity and voting rights.