DeepSeek is close to finalising a new funding round of at least RMB 80 billion, with Tencent and CATL among the largest committed investors, Bloomberg reported on 6 October, in a deal that paves the way for an initial public offering early in 2027.
People familiar with the terms said the final total could approach RMB 100 billion, well above the roughly RMB 50 billion DeepSeek first planned, after its latest model drew demand that outran expectations. The talks are near the end, though the exact size is not yet fixed.
The same report said Moonshot, the maker of the Kimi assistant, has closed its final private round at a value near USD 50 billion, about RMB 335.2 billion, and is pushing toward a Hong Kong IPO in the first quarter of 2027. DeepSeek’s own listing prep has run for months: on 9 September Reuters said it had hired CITIC Securities for a STAR Market IPO.
DeepSeek’s commercial footing is firmer than its peers’. The Information reported on 24 September that its annualised revenue had reached about USD 1 billion, roughly RMB 6.7 billion, more than double the sub-USD 500 million of a few months earlier. Its API now ships two flagship models, DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813 and the lighter DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, and on 29 September the Harness team released a v0.2 preview with macOS and Windows builds.
The funding scale matters because it resets the bar for China’s frontier labs. A round near RMB 100 billion is not venture capital in the old sense. It is a war chest sized for compute, talent and a public debut, with strategic backers who bring distribution as much as cash.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Zhidx report, compiled from Bloomberg, The Information and Reuters. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://www.zhidx.com/p/598870.html.