Lab profileActive frontier lab

DeepSeek (深度求索)

Cost-Curve RebelsTotem · Deep-sea whale

Known for: Open reasoning models; cost discipline; efficient training.

Hangzhou foundation-model lab spun off from quant fund High-Flyer (幻方量化). R1 made DeepSeek the cost-curve reference point for open reasoning models, while commercialization and revenue remain intentionally opaque.

Founded

2023

Location

Hangzhou

Founders

LIANG Wenfeng (梁文锋)

Parent / predecessor

High-Flyer (幻方量化)

Website GitHub

DeepSeek-CoderDeepSeek-V2DeepSeek-V3DeepSeek-R1DeepSeek-V3.2

Revenue

Not disclosed

API pricing only

via 36Kr

ARR

Scale unknown

API pricing visible; revenue scale undisclosed

via 36Kr

Valuation

$50B

$45-50B reported first external raise talks

Funding raised

$7.35B

Rumored/pending first external round: up to 50B yuan (~$7.35B) (rumored / pending)

Key people

Investors

China Big Fund (国家集成电路产业投资基金)Huajin Capital (华金资本)Zhejiang Oriental (浙江东方)

Government backing

Hangzhou Municipal Government (杭州市政府)Zhejiang Provincial Government (浙江省政府)

Notable alumni & departures

GUO Daya (郭达雅)LUO Fuli (罗福莉)

Models & API pricing

Rates are OpenRouter's listed prices (USD per 1M tokens), a convenient cross-provider benchmark. First-party / native API pricing in China can differ, sometimes materially. Source: OpenRouter, as of May 29, 2026. Compare them on the models page.

DeepSeek V4 Pro

1049K context

$0.435

Input / 1M

$0.87

Output / 1M

DeepSeek V4 Flash

1049K context

$0.1

Input / 1M

$0.2

Output / 1M