What started in mid-April as a $300m raise at a $10bn valuation, with Alibaba and Tencent talking, is now an FT-reported deal at $45bn led by the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund. The strategic logic has changed substantially. There is, in venture-capital pricing, a particular kind of ascent that does not normally happen to a company that has spent its entire existence refusing outside money. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported , citing a Financial Times scoop, that China’s main state-backed semiconductor investment vehicle is now in talks to lead DeepSeek’s first external funding round at a valuation of approximately $45bn. The valuation is more than double the figure that was being discussed only two weeks ago. The trajectory, in itself, is striking. The composition of the lead investor is more so.…