DeepSeek has suspended its second round of fundraising following the viral spread of comments by its founder Liang Wenfeng about the China-US race in artificial intelligence development. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] The company verbally informed several prospective investors that agreements expected to be signed in the coming days would not proceed as planned. [1]

The pause came amid frustration from Liang, triggered by online reports revealing excerpts of an internal meeting with investors. In the leaked transcript, Liang reportedly said China lags the US in AI maturity by around 12 to 18 months, that China uses only one twentieth of the US’s computing power, and that four Huawei AI chips equate roughly to one Nvidia chip. He also noted the Nvidia CUDA ecosystem is rapidly being disrupted by AI code generation. [8]

DeepSeek completed its first fundraising round in June 2026, raising about $7 billion at an approximate valuation of $50 billion. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] The second round, launched just weeks after the first, targeted raising at least 10 billion yuan (around $1.5 billion) at a pre-money valuation near 480 billion yuan ($70 billion), a sizable increase from the first round. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7]

Investors in the first round included major Chinese firms such as Tencent Holdings and Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7] However, DeepSeek has not publicly confirmed the authenticity of the leaked meeting transcript or offered clear responses regarding the status of the second round. [1, 2, 3, 6]

DeepSeek’s management stated they will focus on investing in AI research, open source large language models, and the pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI). [3, 4, 5, 7]

The company is also preparing for an initial public offering, potentially filing in 2026.[s1,s2,s3,4,5,7]

An anonymous Bloomberg insider said, “DeepSeek has verbally informed some of its would-be backers that they wouldn’t be signing investment agreements in the coming days, as they had expected.” The source added the suspension partly stems from Liang’s frustration over the leaked comments. Another insider suggested the company may resume funding talks later. [1, 6]

The leak circulated widely on Chinese social media starting July 22, 2026. By late July, DeepSeek had communicated the funding pause to investors. [8, 1, 2, 3]

DeepSeek now faces the task of managing investor relations amid these challenges as it advances toward a planned IPO, signaling that decisions on fundraising may evolve in coming months. [1, 6]