DeepSeek launches massive hiring spree to double workforce after $7.4 billion funding round

DeepSeek plans hiring spree in escalation of China's AI talent war

Chinese AI group DeepSeek is planning to double the size of many of its core teams, joining an intensifying talent war as it seeks to commercialise its frontier research. The company said on Friday it had launched a recruitment drive to "expand every department" and that "many teams are expected to double in size". The advertised roles suggest the group is broadening beyond frontier model research into product development as it prepares to take on outside investment for the first time. DeepSeek emerged as China's artificial intelligence darling last year after the release of its open-source R1 reasoning model, which demonstrated performance comparable to leading western systems but was trained using more efficient methods. Competition among Chinese AI groups has intensified in recent months, with rivals including Zhipu AI and Moonshot AI releasing improved open-source models that have been rapidly adopted by developers. DeepSeek's consumer chatbot has ceded ground to ByteDance's Doubao in China, as users complained of slow response times, service outages and hallucinations. The recruitment drive reflects founder Liang Wenfeng's ambition to build DeepSeek into a broader AI company rather than a pure research lab. Liang has also argued for recruiting young engineers rather than established researchers. Among the openings are AI product managers, product operations specialists and data product managers with expertise in sectors including law, medicine and languages, suggesting the company intends to develop more industry-specific products. The company is also recruiting extensively for infrastructure engineering, including specialists in AI computing clusters, distributed storage, networking and training frameworks. The move indicates continued investment in large-scale model training and inference -- the process through which chatbots generate responses. DeepSeek has previously recruited for data centre positions in Inner Mongolia, a region of northern China where a network of AI data centres is being built, taking advantage of its low electricity costs. Data engineers feature prominently among the openings, underscoring the growing importance of high-quality training data for AI models. Chinese companies are increasingly competing on model efficiency and reasoning ability rather than simply scaling computing power. DeepSeek has also expanded its work on AI infrastructure in partnership with Huawei, helping optimise models to run on the Chinese company's Ascend AI chips as Beijing pushes to reduce reliance on Nvidia hardware. This year, DeepSeek released an Ascend-optimised version of its V4 model, although adapting frontier models to domestic chips has posed significant engineering challenges. The hiring push comes as DeepSeek pursues outside funding for the first time. People familiar with the fundraising have said it is in part motivated by China's fierce AI talent war, in which DeepSeek's staff have been poached by larger rivals including Xiaomi and ByteDance.

'Humanity now stands on the eve of AGI': DeepSeek wants to "at least double the size of every department" as company pursues hiring spree in pursuit of AGI

* DeepSeek wants to double its workforce * "Humanity now stands on the eve of AGI" * American customers are buying DeepSeek models China's DeepSeek has announced a major recruitment campaign as it sets out to "at least double the size of every department" as it pursues artificial general intelligence (AGI) (via the South China Morning Post). "Humanity now stands on the eve of AGI," the company said, as it targets significant growth just three years after it launched as an AI startup. The company recently completed its first external fundraising round, securing around $7.4 billion at a valuation of more than $50 billion. Around two-fifths of that was said to have come from CEO Liang Wenfeng. DeepSeek enters major hiring spree Conversely, OpenAI said it had a valuation of $852 billion in March. "DeepSeek's hiring philosophy is to let newcomers take on the most core and important tasks directly," the firm said in an announcement, implying it's not seeking "geniuses" immediately. SCMP notes that the company is hiring for server-side development engineers, pre-training data engineers and supercomputing cluster R&D engineers. New product management hires also indicate that DeepSeek could be looking to build more customer-facing products and look for other commercial opportunities, marking a shift from its earlier focus on research. DeepSeek itself is in an awkward position globally, with ongoing US restrictions continuing to limit access to advanced GPUs like Nvidia's latest-generation hardware. The company already has a partnership with fellow Chinese giant Huawei, and is tuning its models to run efficiently on its partner's chips. But global opportunities could be opening up for the company, with earlier reporting indicating that US firms are increasingly buying DeepSeek's models because they're more cost-effective than US alternatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others. As for the hires, it's likely that the company will focus on its Hangzhou headquarters and Beijing R&D facility, but future expansions driven by global interest could see the company start to expand its footprint beyond China. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

DeepSeek to 'double size of all departments' as it competes with AI rivals

The hiring push comes amid additional plans to raise significant funds of roughly $7.4bn. Chinese AI company DeepSeek will reportedly double the size of all of its departments amid a push to compete with domestic rivals and global leaders in the artificial intelligence space. DeepSeek announced the hiring plans for technical and engineering professionals on messaging platform WeChat, noting that the company is specifically looking to employ additional data engineers, development engineers and AI cross-disciplinary technical talent. In mid-June, it was reported that DeepSeek is in the process of raising $7.4bn, which would bring the platform to a post-money valuation of more than $50bn. According to Bloomberg, the organisation is in the final stages of the fundraising, in what will be one of China's largest start-up fundraising efforts. The round comes with an odd caveat however, in that it apparently requires investors to put their funds into a limited partnership managed by DeepSeek founder and CEO Liang Wenfeng rather than the company itself. Investors' funds are also subject to a five-year lock up period and they will not have voting rights. It is believed that among the investors are WeChat creator Tencent and battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex. Tencent is also reported to have proposed taking a 20pc stake in the company. DeepSeek's strategy comes amid efforts to compete with rivals operating in the AI field. In early June, OpenAI revealed future plans to file as an IPO, with projections suggesting that this could potentially value the ChatGPT maker at up to $1trn, one of the largest listings in history. This announcement came just days after rival Anthropic announced a similar plan to go public. Meanwhile, domestically, DeepSeek faces competition from organisations such as Alibaba Group Holding and MiniMax Group, which have introduced their own competitive services. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

DeepSeek plans to double workforce amid $7.4 billion raise By Investing.com

Investing.com -- DeepSeek said it is working to at least double the size of all departments as the Chinese artificial intelligence company pursues a major expansion following a large fundraising round. The Hangzhou-based firm announced the hiring push in a statement on WeChat, covering technical and engineering roles. The move follows DeepSeek's effort to raise about 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) in one of China's largest startup financings, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month. "As technology evolves, we are striving to at least double the size of all departments," the company said in its post. DeepSeek gained attention at the start of last year with a breakthrough reasoning model developed at a fraction of the cost of its Silicon Valley competitors. The company has since launched additional services as it competes with domestic rivals including Alibaba Group Holding and Minimax Group, as well as global companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The positions DeepSeek is recruiting for include data engineers, development engineers and AI cross-disciplinary technical talent. The success of DeepSeek and other low-cost Chinese models has raised concerns about spending on AI accelerators from the world's most valuable company. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

DeepSeek Looks to Double Workforce as Fresh Funding Fuels Growth

China's DeepSeek plans to double its workforce after raising more than $7.4 billion in its first funding round, as it looks to compete with U.S. counterparts OpenAI and Anthropic. The Hangzhou-based company said in a WeChat statement late Thursday that it is hiring for 27 type of technical roles, including development engineers, data engineers, AI product managers and operations staff, alongside positions in functional departments such as human resources, legal and finance. The company said that all positions are open to interns. "Humanity is currently at the dawn of AGI," DeepSeek said in the statement. "As technology advances, we are striving to at least double the scale of all departments." The hiring push follows DeepSeek's recent completion of its first fundraising at a valuation of more than $50 billion. Founder Liang Wenfeng, who held nearly 90% of the company before the financing, contributed about $3 billion, the largest investment in the round. Other major investors include Tencent, Contemporary Amperex Technology, and China's National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund. DeepSeek has emerged as one of China's leading AI companies after debuting a powerful, low-cost AI model a year ago, bolstering Beijing's ambitions in the global AI race with the U.S.