PALO ALTO, California — DeepSeek may have jolted Wall Street and Silicon Valley into reconsidering their AI investment strategies, but the startup’s sudden rise has yet to spur venture capital activity in China, where government funds have emerged as the primary backers of the technology.
Despite an overall decline in the VC market since 2021, China venture investors led bets in the artificial intelligence and machine learning sector in Asia last year, according to data from PitchBook. China recorded 715 deals in the sector in 2024, totaling $7.3 billion, far surpassing any other country in the region. South Korea followed with 308 deals totaling $1.8 billion and India came third, with 306 deals worth $1.7 billion.
