DeepSeek Secures $15 B to Challenge OpenAI and Anthropic
The biggest competition in artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer just about who can build the smartest AI. It is also about who gets to decide how people use AI and how it is made available.
On one side are companies in the United States. Many of them want to keep control of the cloud services where AI runs, the instructions people give AI, and the process of producing AI answers. Their AI models often run on large, centrally managed systems that users must pay to access.
On the other side are companies like DeepSeek. DeepSeek shares the weights of its AI models openly. These weights are the numbers that help an AI model work. This means businesses can install and run the models in their own data centers. They can keep more control over their information and spend less money on expensive cloud services.
This creates an important choice: protecting privacy or relying on centrally controlled systems, and using open models or paying for subscriptions and the cost of running AI. These differences will help shape the future of artificial intelligence.
Now, back to the main news. DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence company, has raised about 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) in its latest round of funding. This makes it one of the largest funding rounds in China. The huge investment shows that DeepSeek wants to compete around the world with Western AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
According to a person familiar with the discussions, DeepSeek doubled the amount of money it wanted to raise while talking with investors. At first, the company discussed increasing its funding goal from 50 billion yuan to 80 billion yuan. In the end, it raised 100 billion yuan. The main investors were battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology and technology company Tencent Holdings.
In 2025, DeepSeek caused a $1 trillion drop in global markets. It showed that it could compete with leading AI companies while spending much less money to develop neural networks, the technology that helps AI learn and work.
Even so, DeepSeek has never had as much money available as the leading American AI companies. This new funding round shows that the gap is slowly getting smaller. However, DeepSeek still has much less money than OpenAI or Anthropic, which have each raised more than 100 billion.
According to the source, DeepSeek is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO). This means the company plans to offer its shares to the public for the first time, which would be an important step in its growth.
Recently, DeepSeek has been spending more money and resources on building data centers that process AI information and creating more open-source AI models. The company regularly releases AI models that work well and cost relatively little to use. This puts more pressure on competing companies in China and helps DeepSeek attract customers in the United States and other countries.
The billions of dollars DeepSeek has raised, although still much less than its American competitors, show that the competition is far from finished. Companies will compete not only to build better technology but also over money, business plans, and the balance of power between countries.
The big question is which way of offering AI will become more popular. Will people mostly use AI through platforms controlled by a few large companies? Or will businesses choose AI models they can install, run, and control themselves?
While large American and Chinese companies compete for the AI market, this difference matters less to NVIDIA. Whether companies use private AI services in the cloud or open-weight AI models in their own data centers, they still need powerful computers to run them. Competition between AI models may change which companies lead the industry. But as long as AI needs special computer chips called accelerators, the demand for powerful hardware will remain a major part of the business. That is unlikely to change.