BEIJING, July 23 (Reuters) - The founder of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek said the company is prioritising the development of long-term artificial general intelligence over maximising profit, state-owned media outlet Yicai reported on Thursday.
• DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng made the remarks to investors during a four-hour meeting held recently, Yicai reported, citing a transcript of the meeting.
• The company is likely to keep its most advanced models open-source, Liang told investors, arguing that open-source development and commercial monetisation are not mutually exclusive.
• DeepSeek rose to global prominence early last year after its low-cost V3 and R1 models challenged assumptions about China's ability to compete with U.S. AI leaders despite Washington's restrictions on advanced-chip exports.
• It recently completed its maiden fundraising round at a roughly $52 billion valuation, reversing a years-long strategy of rejecting external capital, amid growing pressure from domestic competitors such as tech giants like ByteDance and well-funded startups including Moonshot and Z.ai.
• At the meeting, Liang described computing power as the biggest constraint, saying the main gap with the U.S. is access to resources rather than technical know-how.
• He also said DeepSeek plans to build its own large AI computing clusters in the future, but has not decided whether to develop proprietary AI chips.
• "I hope to be able to buy chips at a reasonable price so that I don't have to make chips myself," he was quoted as saying in the Yicai report.
• The U.S. has already limited exports to China of some of the most advanced AI chips, but has held off on adding DeepSeek, Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT and more than 100 other companies flagged as national security risks to a trade blacklist to avoid escalating tensions with Beijing, Reuters has reported.
(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Sharon Singleton)