China’s DeepSeek whose low-cost AI model shocked tech industry plans to double its workforce

Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek has announced plans to double the size of its workforce following a massive, multi-billion-dollar fundraising round, a report has said.

The expansion comes as the tech firm looks to heavily compete against US generative AI heavyweights like OpenAI and Anthropic. In a statement released on WeChat (via The Wall Street Journal), the Hangzhou-based company revealed it is immediately opening applications for 27 different types of technical and corporate roles.DeepSeek is recruiting development engineers, data engineers, AI product managers and operations staff, alongside scaling up its core corporate departments including human resources, legal, and finance.

The AI company also noted that all of these positions are open to student interns.“Humanity is currently at the dawn of AGI [Artificial General Intelligence]. As technology advances, we are striving to at least double the scale of all departments,” DeepSeek reportedly stated in its announcement.

DeepSeek founding round values AI startup at $50 billion

The major hiring spree follows DeepSeek’s successful first official funding round, which valued the young AI startup at more than $50 billion.

In total, the company raised a staggering $7.4 billion in fresh capital. The fundraising round saw immense financial backing from its own leadership and prominent domestic industry giants.Liang Wenfeng, who controlled nearly 90% of the startup prior to this round, personally contributed approximately $3 billion, which is the single largest individual investment in the round. Furthermore, internet giant Tencent and battery manufacturing colossus Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) both stepped in as major institutional investors.Finally, China’s National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund also injected the capital by signaling strong government support for the firm’s growth.DeepSeek has rapidly ascended to become one of China’s most prominent AI companies. The company initially shook up the technology sector a year ago by debuting a highly capable, exceptionally low-cost AI model.