China’s DeepSeek is back at the table with investors for a second round of about RMB50 billion, according to Chinese outlet IT Home. A deal that size would put the AI lab’s pre-money valuation near RMB500 billion, roughly $70 billion, before any new money lands.
Terms and timing are not yet finalized, and the talks could yield an agreement as soon as late August. The development is a reported financing discussion, not a completed round.
A fresh raise would follow DeepSeek’s earlier round, which collected more than RMB50 billion at a valuation above RMB350 billion. The new figure would place the open-weights lab in the same valuation tier as some of the largest AI companies globally.
DeepSeek has been widening its product surface in recent weeks. Its V4-Flash model topped OpenRouter’s weekly ranking with 7.22 trillion tokens processed, and the company launched a formal API beta aimed at agent builders. It is also reported to be developing in-house AI chips to reduce reliance on Nvidia.
The potential round comes as Chinese AI labs race to fund compute and talent amid an intensifying price war, with rivals like Moonshot and Alibaba’s Qwen division pushing free and open-weights models into the market. DeepSeek’s free V4-Flash API beta has already pressured pricing across the sector.
Neither DeepSeek nor its investors have publicly confirmed the round, and the company has not commented on the report.
