Woofun AI reports that DeepSeek has secured its first external funding round exceeding 500 billion RMB (approximately $7.4 billion), abandoning its previous founder-only investment model. The decision was driven by the need to compete in the computing power arms race against models like Anthropic's Mythos, which can exploit software vulnerabilities.

To comply with US export controls, DeepSeek migrated its infrastructure from Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem to Huawei chips, a process that delayed its next-generation model release by 15 months. Following this financing, the company is expanding its organizational structure by recruiting legal, financial, and human resources personnel, moving away from its prior flat operational model.