DeepSeek is close to securing at least RMB 80B ($12B) in a new funding round, with Tencent and battery maker CATL among the largest investors, Bloomberg reported. Signed term sheets suggest the final total could approach RMB 100B.
The round has grown well beyond its original target. DeepSeek initially aimed to raise roughly $7.5B at a valuation near $75B. The company had paused fundraising after founder Liang Wenfeng’s comments about its reliance on Nvidia chips went viral.
Why investors kept coming
Demand appears driven by DeepSeek’s V4-Flash model, which set new cost and performance benchmarks against Anthropic and OpenAI. The company released V4-Pro and V4-Flash as previews in April and is developing its own inference chip to reduce dependence on Nvidia and Huawei.
It is also building a data center with at least 160,000 Huawei AI chips – infrastructure that the new capital will presumably help fund. Liang has said he intends to keep releasing open-weight models freely.
An IPO path opens
After the round closes, DeepSeek plans to restructure to prepare for a potential public listing in early 2027. The company closed its first external funding round in June at about $7.4B, with a valuation above $50B, so this round roughly doubles both the capital raised and the implied scale.
CATL declined to comment. Tencent and DeepSeek did not respond to requests. If the round closes as reported, it would be among the largest private financings ever completed by a Chinese AI company.
