DeepSeek raises $7.4 billion at a $50 billion valuation to compete with Anthropic's Mythos model · Digg

/Tech7h ago

DeepSeek raises $7.4 billion at a $50 billion valuation to compete with Anthropic's Mythos model

Story Overview

After bootstrapping entirely through its CEO's personal wealth for three years, the Hangzhou AI lab abruptly entered the global funding fray with a record first round, directly triggered by Anthropic's April Mythos preview that exposed capability gaps the company now aims to close through scaled compute and infrastructure.

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Original post

Chubby♨️@kimmonismus#1360inTech

Anthropic’s Mythos preview reportedly pushed DeepSeek into a $7.4B fundraising - because they could not compete with Mythos.

Until now, the three-year-old Chinese AI lab had relied on CEO Liang Wenfeng’s personal wealth instead of outside capital.

The Information reports the shift came after Anthropic’s April preview of Mythos. Liang reportedly concluded DeepSeek could not compete at that level without a much larger war chest.

DeepSeek is now expanding aggressively: around 300 employees today, with plans to "at least double" headcount across AI systems, infrastructure, product and research.

6:12 AM · Jun 26, 2026 · 79.6K Views

Industry Shift

Founder retains control via limited partnership

Investor capital flows into a vehicle managed by Liang Wenfeng rather than the company itself, preserving his decision-making authority even as the valuation exceeds $50 billion.

Hiring Surge

Hiring push targets research and training capacity

The firm plans to at least double its 300-person headcount across AI research, engineering, product, and data roles to support multiple training runs, though exact allocation of the $7.4 billion remains unspecified in current reports.

Sentiment

Some users saw Anthropic's Mythos preview as sparking healthy competition and good for open source while others dismissed the DeepSeek $7.4B fundraising reports as fake news or found them grim and distressing.

Pos

30.0%

Neg

70.0%

8 comments with sentiment.

Cluster Engagement

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Related links

Anthropic’s Mythos Spooked DeepSeek, Prompting Its $7.4 Billion Fundraising

THE INFORMATIONVia

Anthropic’s Mythos Spooked DeepSeek, Prompting Its $7.4 Billion Fundraising

Posts from X

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VIEWS62.2KBOOKMARKS36LIKES298RETWEETS23REPLIES39

Chubby♨️@kimmonismus

I think many people are not yet aware of the tectonic shift taking place.

By preventing state-of-the-art capabilities - at least insofar as we are able to use them - open source becomes not only more attractive for one’s own applications, but more attractive overall.

This also applies, for example, to entire states such as the European Union, provided it genuinely sets itself the goal of implementing AI.

This not only attracts new investments and fresh capital, but also creates an opportunity for a PR coup that draws many idealists toward open-source companies.

In that sense, I can well imagine that companies like OpenAI and Anthropic will suffer the most from regulation by the U.S. government - on two fronts - and that this indirectly does open source a tremendous service, especially given that it now primarily comes from China.

Chubby♨️@kimmonismus

Anthropic’s Mythos preview reportedly pushed DeepSeek into a $7.4B fundraising - because they could not compete with Mythos.

Until now, the three-year-old Chinese AI lab had relied on CEO Liang Wenfeng’s personal wealth instead of outside capital.

The Information reports the shift came after Anthropic’s April preview of Mythos. Liang reportedly concluded DeepSeek could not compete at that level without a much larger war chest.

DeepSeek is now expanding aggressively: around 300 employees today, with plans to "at least double" headcount across AI systems, infrastructure, product and research.

6h62.2K29836

Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

The Information reports that Anthropic’s Mythos preview spooked DeepSeek into fundraising.

Because, CEO Liang Wenfeng realized it needed a much bigger cash pile to compete.

And DeepSeek now plans to double its workforce too.

AI competition is no longer just about model cleverness; it is about compute reserves, talent density, secure infrastructure, product surface area, and enough cash to survive several failed training runs.

---

theinformation .com/articles/anthropics-mythos-spooked-deepseek-prompting-7-4-billion-fundraising

Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai

Reuters: DeepSeek is going on a hiring sprint, aiming to double every department.

The hiring spans AI core R&D, algorithms, deep learning research, full-stack development, and product roles, which means DeepSeek is no longer only tuning models but building the whole system around them.

---

reuters .com/world/asia-pacific/chinas-deepseek-plans-least-double-staff-all-departments-2026-06-25/

5h6.3K357

Chubby♨️@kimmonismus

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropics-mythos-spooked-deepseek-prompting-7-4-billion-fundraising?rc=bfliih

Chubby♨️@kimmonismus

Anthropic’s Mythos preview reportedly pushed DeepSeek into a $7.4B fundraising - because they could not compete with Mythos.

Until now, the three-year-old Chinese AI lab had relied on CEO Liang Wenfeng’s personal wealth instead of outside capital.

The Information reports the shift came after Anthropic’s April preview of Mythos. Liang reportedly concluded DeepSeek could not compete at that level without a much larger war chest.

DeepSeek is now expanding aggressively: around 300 employees today, with plans to "at least double" headcount across AI systems, infrastructure, product and research.

7h6.6K202

Jing Yang@jingyanghk

DeepSeek’s recent fundraising “marks its transition from a high-efficiency research outlier into a scaled national AI platform...The emergence of a Mythos caliber model in China is most likely to come from either DeepSeek or Zhipu,” said @pstAsiatech

7h6.2K102

Chubby♨️@kimmonismus

@ChainZenit Yeah and to be fair: they are freaking great.

6h2663

Kai Benetti@kai_benetti

@kimmonismus regulation pushing the whole ecosystem toward chinese open source feels like the opposite of what it was meant to do

6h3172

22nd Century Vision@AetasFuturis

@kimmonismus Mythos really shocked the industry, and the US government as well.

7h4954

Chubby♨️@kimmonismus

@AetasFuturis it shocked everyone. literally.

7h4617

Chris@OZARGPT

@kimmonismus Open source will be banned

6h84

Strata@ChainZenit

@kimmonismus Open source is just the baseline now, nothing to get excited about.

6h2403

Chris@OZARGPT

@AetasFuturis @kimmonismus All countries will.

6h14

jorgejhms@jorgejhms

@OZARGPT @AetasFuturis @kimmonismus Probably not...

5h5

Jing Yang@jingyanghk

When tech news headlines were abuzz with Anthropic Mytho's superpower early Apr, #DeepSeek CEO Liang also quietly made a strategic shift: it can't stay in the game without compute & data at enormous scales, which can't be secured without enormous capital https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropics-mythos-spooked-deepseek-prompting-7-4-billion-fundraising

7h6.2K153

Ben Pielstick@BenPielstick

@kimmonismus The big important question is, where does the money go?

6h1431

Pinkman@pinkman_ai

@kimmonismus Whats actually in mythos that made a three year old lab change its entire funding philosophy this fast

7h295

Maya@MayaStone420

@kimmonismus The information is a fake news

7h275

StolenAngel@MoisasADR

@kimmonismus Two months until the Mythos class arrives? Poor Dario he’ll only be able to keep his token price up for a short while, seeing as the government did him the "favor" of hitting the pause button.

7h2374

Chubby♨️@kimmonismus

@BenPielstick what money?

6h215

NotedallaSfera@TalkingMusicz

@kimmonismus @LyraInTheFlesh I am at that point that I would volunteer to help Open Source in my free time

4h192

kpax@itskpax

@kimmonismus Even if the US eventually bans open foreign models, they're not going to be able to stop individuals from using them, and eventually small models will be more than powerful enough to run on consumer hardware and rival fable. The signal *cannot* be stopped.

5h601