Chinese AI provider DeepSeek is close to finalizing a funding round of at least $12 billion, led by Tencent and CATL, Bloomberg reports. That is almost double the 50 billion yuan it originally targeted. The round could grow to as much as 100 billion yuan amid strong investor demand.
Demand Pushes the Record Round to $12 Billion
DeepSeek is heading toward at least 80 billion yuan, or roughly $12 billion, in its ongoing funding round, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter.
The company had originally targeted only 50 billion yuan. Investor demand has reportedly exceeded that target by a wide margin, and the round could grow to as much as 100 billion yuan.
Tencent and CATL are once again leading the financing, as they did in DeepSeek's first external round last summer. The report does not specify individual investors' stakes in the new tranche.
The figure itself is independently unverified, since DeepSeek, as a private company, does not publish audited financial statements.
The new tranche follows DeepSeek's first external funding round from last summer, in which the company raised around 50 billion yuan, or about $7.4 billion. At nearly double that volume, the new round shows how quickly investor interest has grown within a few months.
The report does not say how soon the round will actually close. Observers read the higher target as a sign that both international and Chinese investors continue to see strong potential in DeepSeek's technology following the success of its V4 model.
For CEO Liang Wenfeng, closing the round would also demonstrate that DeepSeek can keep attracting fresh capital despite US export controls on AI chips.
The Round Extends a Months-Long Growth Story
The new target continues a series of rapidly rising valuations and fits into our ongoing dossier on AI funding and valuations. Tencent and CATL were joined in the first external round by NetEase, JD.com, and IDG Capital, along with China's state AI investment fund.
In July, DeepSeek had named $70 billion as its target valuation, followed by $74 billion in August. In late September, the company said it aimed to close a $7.5 billion round by the end of October — a target that current demand has now far exceeded.
Alongside the funding round, DeepSeek has reportedly mandated the bank CITIC Securities, according to Reuters, to prepare a listing on Shanghai's STAR Market, where robotics maker Unitree debuted previously.
CEO Liang Wenfeng had also reported a doubled annualized revenue run of $1 billion in August, after DeepSeek raised its API prices by a factor of 2.3 to 4.5 without losing significant numbers of customers. More than 70 percent of its computing capacity reportedly still goes toward training new models rather than running existing ones.
Despite the Record Sum, DeepSeek Still Trails Anthropic by Far
Even with $12 billion in fresh capital, DeepSeek remains far smaller than its US rivals. Anthropic reached a $965 billion valuation in May after a $65 billion Series H round, Yahoo Finance reported.
DeepSeek's own most recent target valuation of around $75 billion is less than a tenth of that figure. At the same time, the company shares its pool of Chinese investors with other fast-growing AI firms: in August, Alibaba raised $10.2 billion through a Hong Kong share placement to fund its own AI expansion.
OpenAI and Anthropic draw most of their capital from US venture investors and cloud companies, while DeepSeek's backers are mainly Chinese technology and industrial groups. A Shanghai listing would give DeepSeek access to domestic capital that its US rivals do not have in the same way.
The valuation gap with Anthropic and OpenAI is unlikely to narrow soon, as both US providers are also expanding their computing capacity aggressively.
Whether DeepSeek closes the round as planned or shifts its target again remains open — the previous round itself slipped several times between July and September. What matters next is whether the fresh capital is followed in the near term by the Shanghai listing CITIC Securities is preparing, for which Bloomberg has given no date so far.
