deepseek

According to X platform blogger @MaxForAI, a screenshot of the DeepSeek Harness internal testing recruitment is circulating on social media. The screenshot shows that the DeepSeek Harness plans to start internal testing later this week, with the first batch of users being selected from small group chats. Selected individuals must submit personal information and sign a "Confidentiality Commitment Letter." The screenshot also specifically reminds that any leaks will result in disqualification and affect future opportunities for selection in the DeepSeek model and product internal testing. If the news is true, the official version of DeepSeek V4 and the Harness product are expected to be launched soon.

According to Bloomberg, DeepSeek announced the suspension of its second round of financing and verbally notified some potential investors that it would not sign investment agreements as expected. This suspension partly stems from founder Liang Wenfeng's dissatisfaction with the leak of a 4-hour internal transcript during its first financing deal, where he made 52 statements in an investor meeting regarding DeepSeek's organizational culture, open-source logic, technology roadmap, and views on the competitive landscape of the industry. The nearly 4-hour meeting record recently went viral on social media, including statements such as "The biggest gap between China and the U.S. in AI is computing power resources." Both DeepSeek and Liang Wenfeng have not confirmed the authenticity of the leaked record.DeepSeek stated that it may still choose to resume the transaction process in the future and has begun preparations for an initial public offering, with the IPO potentially being filed as early as this year.DeepSeek completed its first round of external financing in June 2026, raising over 50 billion yuan, approximately 7.4 billion dollars, with a post-investment valuation of about 50-59 billion dollars. It adopted a special structure, with most funds entering a limited partnership managed by Liang Wenfeng, where investors have no voting rights and are locked in for 5 years. Liang Wenfeng himself contributed about 20 billion yuan as the largest contributor, with participation from Tencent, CATL, JD.com, NetEase, and the Chinese National AI Fund. DeepSeek subsequently initiated discussions for its second round of financing in mid-July, targeting a valuation of about 71 billion dollars.

In a leaked internal conversation from the DeepSeek investor conference, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng elaborated on his core views regarding the development of the domestic AI computing power industry and ecosystem. He stated that the current domestic AI chip replacement is facing a historic opportunity, with no compatibility barriers in hardware and ecosystem, and that NVIDIA cannot block the replacement process. The only current issue is insufficient production capacity, and it is expected that within a year, the market's perception of domestic chips as "unusable and poor-performing" can be reversed.He pointed out that NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem moat is rapidly collapsing, and multiple industry transformations combined with export controls have opened a development window for domestic AI chips. He revealed that DeepSeek has partnered with Huawei to obtain 16,000 950 cards to run the ecosystem, and Huawei's 950 super nodes can completely replace NVIDIA's GB200 and GB300 in terms of performance and price, showing an optimistic attitude towards the development of the domestic computing power industry.

Last month, comments from Liang Wenfeng during the DeepSeek investor meeting have recently circulated. Liang Wenfeng clearly stated that DeepSeek's goal is AGI, rather than becoming the next super app. They will not engage in 3D, video generation, or world modeling, nor will they close source code, stating, "Restraint is a strategy used to increase the probability of achieving AGI." He believes that products are merely "by-products" on the path to AGI, with the current focus on Coding Agent and continuous learning capabilities. The next phase aims to achieve autonomous model iteration, with the endpoint pointing towards embodied intelligence.In terms of commercialization, Liang Wenfeng stated that they only seek to earn "reasonable profits" and do not set profit maximization as their pricing goal. DeepSeek is "still far from a complete shift to commercialization." He assesses that the gap between AI in China and the U.S. mainly lies in resources rather than talent, stating, "Using a fraction of the computing power can narrow the gap to 6 months, 3 months." Regarding industry competition, he believes that open source is "the sweet point for companies of this scale," while also predicting that domestic large models will ultimately converge to "two large companies and two small companies." Liang Wenfeng also mentioned that maintaining team stability is the only non-negotiable core principle, and the company is driven by vision, with "a group of ordinary people achieving extraordinary things."

According to PConline Pacific Technology reports, the official version of DeepSeek-V4 has begun a small-scale gray testing, including two versions: DeepSeek-V4-Pro and DeepSeek-V4-Flash. Insiders say that the official version is expected to be released at the end of this month, which is somewhat delayed compared to previous plans. The new version will focus on optimizing inference efficiency, response speed, and agent capabilities.Developers participating in the testing claim that V4's comprehensive capabilities are on par with Anthropic Opus 4.8, with code generation close to OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol, and improvements in scenarios such as 3D modeling, SVG image generation, and mini-game development. DeepSeek-V4 has completed the adaptation for de-CUDA, and on the first day of launch, it will be compatible with multiple domestic AI chips, and will adopt peak and off-peak API billing, with peak prices being double that of off-peak.

DeepSeek's first round of financing has officially landed. Business registration information shows that DeepSeek's affiliated company, Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co., Ltd., recently underwent a business change, adding Hangzhou Chengli Enterprise Management Consulting Partnership (Limited Partnership) and National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership) as shareholders, with registered capital increased to 16.4475 million yuan.

According to a report by The Information, DeepSeek is seeking a new round of financing, targeting an amount of $7.4 billion, with a company valuation of $74 billion. DeepSeek's recent annual revenue reached $400 million to $500 million, mainly from enterprises and developers calling the model through the API, with a gross margin of over 50% for the V4 API.

According to Bloomberg, DeepSeek has begun preparations for its initial public offering (IPO), which may submit its listing application as early as this year.DeepSeek is working with accounting firms and expects to complete its financial reports by the end of December this year, which is a necessary preparation for submitting the IPO application. The company plans to officially submit its listing application by the end of this year or early 2027.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng's net worth has risen to approximately $36 billion, more than doubling from about $16.7 billion previously, surpassing Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman.Previously, DeepSeek completed a $7.4 billion financing round in June 2026, with the company's valuation reaching $50 billion. Bloomberg estimates that Liang Wenfeng holds about 78% of DeepSeek's shares, and his wealth increase mainly comes from the rise in the company's valuation.

According to reports, three informed sources revealed that the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is developing its own AI chip. This chip is primarily designed for the inference stage of AI computing, rather than for training new models. This move aims to reduce the company's reliance on chips from Nvidia and Huawei.The report noted that the chip development plan began about a year ago and is still in the early stages. DeepSeek is discussing with external partners such as chip design firms, foundries, and storage companies, and has increased its recruitment of chip design engineers through private channels in recent months. Additionally, following the news, Nvidia's pre-market stock price fell slightly by about 1.6%.Analysts believe that if the development is successful, it will mark a significant strategic shift for DeepSeek, aligning with the global trend of leading AI developers seeking hardware autonomy, and may also pose a challenge to Huawei's position in the domestic AI chip market. However, the project still faces challenges such as long design cycles, high funding requirements, and manufacturing barriers like U.S. export restrictions on advanced processes and high-bandwidth memory (HBM). This chip development initiative also aligns with recent reports about DeepSeek's plan to raise $7 billion in its first round of financing.

DeepSeek has officially launched the web version of its image recognition mode, while the app is still in the internal testing phase. From a functional perspective, the newly launched image recognition mode is still in its initial stage. The reporter used a photo of DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng multiple times to test the model, which, after a few minutes of processing, provided several incorrect answers and ultimately admitted, "I am really not sure. I do not recommend guessing names, as guessing wrong is worse than saying 'I don't know.'"In tests conducted by other netizens, when faced with a photo of founder Liang Wenfeng, DeepSeek even misidentified him as Yang Zhilin, the founder of Moonlight Dark Side, and a "younger version" of Ma Huateng. It is worth noting that just before the launch of the image recognition mode, DeepSeek was reported to have finalized its first round of financing exceeding 50 billion yuan. According to market news, the core investment terms for DeepSeek are: whether for large companies or VC funds, Liang Wenfeng's most important requirement is: do not poach DeepSeek's people or suggest they start their own businesses. The reporter inquired with insiders at DeepSeek about this situation and learned that this statement is basically true.

According to a report by Reuters, informed sources revealed that the U.S. government has currently postponed adding Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, memory chip manufacturer Changxin Storage (CXMT), and more than 100 other companies marked as "national security risks" to the U.S. Department of Commerce's trade blacklist (entity list). The report pointed out that this move by the Trump administration aims to avoid escalating tensions with Beijing.It is reported that the aforementioned companies had already received approval for inclusion from the U.S. interagency committee last year, but the Department of Commerce has not publicly announced any new additions to the entity list since October of last year, marking the longest update stagnation period in over a decade. In addition, some other Chinese companies marked as potential sanction targets for allegedly providing equipment related to Russian drones, selling restricted Nvidia chips to Chinese universities, or manufacturing unmanned devices for the Chinese military have also not been formally included on the list.

According to The Information, DeepSeek has completed a record financing of over $7 billion, valuing the company at over $50 billion in this round of financing.In terms of funding sources, founder Liang Wenfeng personally invested 20 billion yuan, Tencent invested 10 billion yuan, CATL invested 5 billion yuan, and JD.com, NetEase, and IDG Capital each invested 3 billion yuan. The only exception is the National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund of China, which directly invested 1 billion yuan in DeepSeek, not only holding voting rights but also not subject to a 5-year lock-up period. Aside from the national-level fund, external investors have no voting rights and can only access specific financial information and enjoy priority investment rights in subsequent financing.The new round of financing marks a significant shift in DeepSeek's operating model. Since its establishment in 2023, DeepSeek, as the AI team under Huansquare Quantitative, has relied on its own funds for operation and has maintained research independence due to a lack of commercialization pressure. However, under pressure from funding and talent retention, Liang Wenfeng and the team initiated financing in April and conducted strict due diligence on the limited partners behind the investors to prevent equity from falling into the hands of unknown investors.