Abstract:
On October 22, according to Bloomberg, DeepSeek has raised approximately 100 billion yuan (approximately US$15 billion) in the latest round of financing. This is one of the largest financings in China’s history and also demonstrates the startup’s ambition to compete globally with companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI.
DeepSeek
According to people familiar with the matter, DeepSeek raised its financing target at least twice during negotiations with investors, from the initial 50 billion yuan to 80 billion yuan, and the final financing amount reached 100 billion yuan. CATL and Tencent are among the largest investors in DeepSeek’s current round of financing.
This round of financing for DeepSeek paves the way for its future listing and is expected to create one of the most anticipated listing events in the Chinese market in many years. In 2025, DeepSeek demonstrated its ability to compete with model development costs that are far lower than those of leading Silicon Valley companies, triggering global stock market shocks and evaporating $1 trillion in market value. However, DeepSeek’s financial strength has never been comparable to that of the United States’ cutting-edge AI laboratories.
The latest round of funding shows that this gap in financial strength is starting to narrow. However, DeepSeek’s financial strength is still inferior to Anthropic and OpenAI, the latter two companies have each raised more than $100 billion in funds. Bloomberg previously reported that DeepSeek, like rival Dark Side of the Moon, is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO). This listing will be an important milestone in the Chinese market.
DeepSeek has begun to invest more actively in building AI data centers and developing more open source models for use in China and overseas. The company regularly launches high-performance, low-cost models that put pressure on domestic rivals and win customers in the United States and other overseas markets. For example, in September this year, it released V4.1 Flash, causing the stock prices of local competitors MiniMax and Zhipu to fall.
In addition, many Chinese companies, from Alibaba to ByteDance, have launched low-cost AI services. These services often adopt an open source model so that customers can modify them according to their own needs.
Artificial Analysis, an AI analysis agency, once released a widely circulated benchmark chart, outlining the so-called "DeepSeek death zone": If competitors cannot surpass DeepSeek in performance and cannot provide lower prices, they will find it difficult to survive.
As of press time, representatives from DeepSeek, Tencent and CATL had not responded to requests for comment.
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