DeepSeek, one of the so-called Hangzhou Six Little Dragons, is preparing to list on the STAR Market and has engaged CITIC Securities to lead the IPO work, according to the latest reports.
In 2026 DeepSeek reversed its long-standing ‘no external funding’ stance. Since its first external round in April, it has run several raises, with the first-round post-money valuation exceeding 350 billion yuan. As it moves toward an IPO, the market has assigned it a valuation of about 500 billion yuan.
A successful listing would put another Hangzhou Six Little Dragons firm into the capital market. Of the six, BrainCo and Deep Robotics remain in accelerated IPO preparation. Unitree and Guge have already reached the market, while Game Science has yet to start.
By latest post-money value, DeepSeek tops the group at about 500 billion yuan. Unitree follows at roughly 210 billion yuan in A-share value, and the rest, Guge, Deep Robotics, BrainCo and Game Science, sit between 10 billion and 20 billion yuan.
Why is DeepSeek the most richly valued? China’s AI model sector is in a strong upcycle, and DeepSeek is a first-tier domestic large-model maker that investors benchmark against MiniMax, Zhipu and Kimi. In the first half, MiniMax posted about US$116.6 million revenue and a US$358 million net loss. Zhipu about US$142 million revenue and a US$298 million net loss. DeepSeek’s first-half annual recurring revenue reached about US$500 million, ahead of Kimi’s roughly US$200 million, reflecting scale and efficiency advantages in compute and inference.
If AI enthusiasm holds at listing, DeepSeek could, like Unitree, see its market value pushed past 1 trillion yuan by speculative money. But for listings, sentiment drives the short term and performance the long term. For a firm that has long burned cash, only a durable technology lead can support such a valuation, and once overtaken on technology or scale, the value can swing sharply.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Sohu report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://www.sohu.com/a/1074063904_102150.
Translated and adapted from Sohu (https://www.sohu.com/a/1074063904_102150).