DeepSeek's $15.9B round drives record China startup deal

Global venture funding hit $59 billion in October, up 45% from a year earlier, per Crunchbase data. A record $15.9 billion round for China's DeepSeek drove much of the jump.

Why it matters: A raise of this size for a lab known for efficiency suggests Chinese frontier labs are shifting toward large outside capital as compute costs climb. It sits beside OpenAI's roughly $11B raise and shows the capital race is global. It also raises the stakes for the chip-access fights over export controls.