DeepSeek is wrapping up a funding round of about 100 billion yuan (roughly $15 billion), Reuters reported on October 22, citing people familiar with the matter. The raise would be one of the largest private AI financings on record and roughly double the Chinese startup’s original target of 50 billion yuan.
Battery maker CATL and Tencent are among the round’s biggest backers, according to the report, joined by more than 15 investors including Midea, Meituan, Geely, GigaDevice, Boyu Capital, CPE, Legend Capital, and existing shareholder IDG Capital. The round values DeepSeek at 500 billion yuan before the new capital, and the company reportedly hired CITIC Securities in September to prepare for a potential STAR Market IPO.
The sheer scale of the round — much of it from state-linked and corporate investors — underlines how aggressively China is financing its AI ambitions against US labs. DeepSeek’s latest release, DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, pushed for faster, cheaper inference at larger scale, and this capital gives the company room to keep training at the frontier. If you are tracking how the leading models stack up, see our ChatGPT vs Claude comparison and Claude vs Gemini breakdown — and what an LLM is for a quick primer on the technology behind the hype.
Source: Reuters via WNFL Sports
