Is a $1 billion investment in DeepSeek? Alibaba denies
There are reports that Alibaba plans to invest $1 billion in DeepSeek to acquire a 10% stake, but insiders at Alibaba have called it "fake news." Due to the ongoing shortage of computing power, some believe it is time for DeepSeek to seek investors, especially since DeepSeek is a rare case that has not yet completed its first round of financing and is catching up with OpenAI's large model enterprises at a lower cost
As DeepSeek's computing power continues to be in urgent demand, the outside world has begun to look for "investors" for this new large model contender.
On Friday afternoon, news broke that Alibaba plans to invest $1 billion in DeepSeek to acquire a 10% stake. Alibaba Cloud will be the primary inference computing power choice.
The news quickly fermented in the market, with Alibaba's U.S. stock pre-market soaring nearly 7%. However, as insiders from Alibaba clarified to the media, the increase rapidly narrowed to 2.5%.
Alibaba Group's public relations head, Yan Qiao, stated:
As a company based in Hangzhou, China, we applaud DeepSeek, but the information circulating about Alibaba investing in DeepSeek is false news.
Notably, the day before this news broke, DeepSeek suddenly suspended its API service recharge, with the button showing a gray unavailable status. A few days prior, DeepSeek's deep thinking and online search functions had also temporarily halted service.
This series of messages has sparked speculation: Is DeepSeek running out of computing power?
According to media reports citing domestic AI product ranking statistics, DeepSeek's application has surpassed 20 million daily active users just 20 days after launch. The enormous traffic has put a strain on DeepSeek's servers.
According to Guotai Junan Securities analysts Shu Di and Li Qi's calculations, assuming DeepSeek's average daily visits are 100 million, with each inquiry consisting of 10 questions, and each question's response using 1,000 tokens (which roughly corresponds to 750 English letters), DeepSeek's inference computing power demand per second would be 1.6*10^19 TOPs.
To expand its computing power infrastructure to meet the access needs of more users, it is time for DeepSeek to find investors. According to previous media reports, DeepSeek is a rare case that has not yet completed its first round of financing and is seeking to catch up with OpenAI's large model companies at a lower cost, "including dollar funds and domestic investors, who are now frantically looking for DeepSeek's contact information."