DeepSeek’s outside funding draws interest from Alibaba, Chinese state funds

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is considering outside funding for the first time and has drawn interest from Alibaba and state funds, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing sources with knowledge of internal discussions.

The Chinese company stunned the tech industry in January with low-cost AI models that can match or even outperform Western rivals at a fraction of the cost, stirring doubts about the lead US has in the race to dominate the technology.

But a surge in demand since then has caused outages at the small startup. The need for more AI…