Tencent and Alibaba are now in talks to invest in DeepSeek at a valuation exceeding $20 billion, according to The Information and confirmed by Bloomberg, roughly doubling the $10 billion figure reported when DeepSeek first disclosed it was seeking outside capital. The involvement of two of China's largest tech conglomerates signals a strategic race to lock in access to the lab's open-weight models. DeepSeek currently has negligible direct revenue — its models are open-source and its consumer app is free — so the valuation rests entirely on future platform leverage and model distribution.