DeepSeek is close to sealing a new financing round of at least RMB 80 billion, with Tencent and the battery maker CATL among the largest backers, according to a Bloomberg report published on 6 October.
The terms already signed suggest the round could ultimately reach roughly RMB 100 billion, paving the way for an initial public offering planned for early 2027.
The size marks a sharp upward revision. People familiar with the matter said DeepSeek originally aimed to raise about RMB 50 billion, but demand from potential investors surged after its latest model landed to a stronger market reaction than expected, pushing the locked-in amount well past the initial target.
Negotiations are near the end, though final terms could still shift and the exact figures are not settled.
In a related move, Moonshot AI has closed its final private round at a valuation of about US$50 billion, roughly RMB 335 billion, and is pushing toward a Hong Kong IPO in the first quarter of 2027.
DeepSeek has been preparing its listing for some time. On 9 September, Reuters reported the company had hired CITIC Securities to prepare a STAR Market IPO on the Shanghai exchange. Two people said DeepSeek intends to start the IPO process this year, though the timing, size and target valuation remain undecided.
On 24 September, The Information reported that DeepSeek’s annualised revenue had reached about US$1 billion, more than double the sub-US$500 million level of a few months earlier. At the time it was finalising a new round planned to close by the end of October at around RMB 50 billion, with a RMB 500 billion target valuation, while its STAR Market preparations advanced in parallel.
Its commercial flagship remains two application programming interfaces: the top-tier DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813 and the lighter DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash. On the agentic side, the DeepSeek Harness team released a v0.2 preview on 29 September with desktop installers for macOS and Windows.
The signal for Western builders and investors is not the headline number. It is the speed at which a research lab turned itself into a revenue-generating, pre-IPO institution, funded by the balance sheets of China’s largest internet and industrial companies rather than Western capital markets.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Zhidx report. 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.