DeepSeek Seeks $300M at $10B Valuation as OpenAI, Anthropic Valuations Spark Market Debate

Gate News message, April 17 — According to The Information, DeepSeek is in talks to raise at least $300 million at a valuation of $10 billion, a fraction of leading U.S. AI companies: OpenAI commands $852 billion, while Anthropic is valued at up to $800 billion. The valuation gap has sparked investor debate over whether DeepSeek represents a bargain or if American AI firms are overpriced.

DeepSeek’s R1 model, launched in January 2025, trained for approximately $5.6 million—a fraction of the hundreds of millions typically spent by U.S. laboratories—triggered a market shock that erased nearly $1 trillion in U.S. equity value in a single day, with Nvidia losing close to $600 billion in market capitalization. Since then, performance rankings between U.S. and Chinese models have traded the top position multiple times; as of March 2026, Anthropic’s leading model holds just a 2.7% performance advantage, according to Stanford University’s 2026 AI Index.

On the revenue front, OpenAI reported an annualized run rate of $25 billion in February, while Anthropic surged from $9 billion at end-2025 to $30 billion by March, driven primarily by Claude Code demand. In Q1 2026, just four deals—OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Waymo—accounted for 63% of total capital raised globally. SpaceX-xAI is targeting an IPO valuation potentially exceeding $1.75 trillion, potentially the largest IPO in market history.

Some investors have raised concerns about OpenAI’s current valuation, with one backer telling the Financial Times that justifying the $852 billion price requires assuming an IPO valuation of $1.2 trillion or more. The extreme valuation gap between DeepSeek and American AI leaders is now raising questions about whether speculative appetite, rather than revenue-generating capability, is driving market prices.