Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek disrupted Silicon Valley with the release of cheaply developed AI models that compete with flagship offerings from OpenAI — but the ChatGPT maker suspects they were built upon OpenAI data.

OpenAI is in talks for an investment round to raise nearly $40 billion that would value the AI startup at up to $340 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

SoftBank would lead the $40 billion round for the ChatGPT maker, some of which would go to the Stargate AI infrastructure venture.

Chinese tech startup DeepSeek ’s new artificial intelligence chatbot has sparked discussions about the competition between China and the U.S. in AI development, with many users flocking to test the rival of OpenAI ‘s ChatGPT.

Since Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek rattled Silicon Valley and Wall Street with its cost-effective models, the company has been accused of data theft through a practice that is common across the industry.

A new report indicates that DeepSeek's R1 reasoning model refused to answer some 85% of 1,360 sensitive-topic "prompts".