DeepSeek raises $7.4 billion in first external funding round at up to $59 billion valuation

DeepSeek slated to draw $7 billion in maiden fundraising, sources say

June 3 (Reuters) - Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is set to raise about 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) in its first funding round from investors including Tencent Holdings (0700.HK), opens new tab and CATL (300750.SZ), opens new tab, people with knowledge of the matter said. The fundraising could value the company after the investment at between 350 billion yuan and 400 billion yuan, or between $52 billion and $59 billion, the people said, declining to be identified because the information is confidential. DeepSeek became China's national AI champion and garnered global fame early last year, when its V3 and R1 models drew widespread praise in Silicon Valley and challenged ⁠U.S. assumptions about China's AI capabilities. TENCENT, CATL SET TO BE BIGGEST EXTERNAL INVESTORS The startup's founder, Liang Wenfeng, has committed 20 billion yuan of his own money, the people said, adding that tech conglomerate Tencent is considering 10 billion yuan and battery giant CATL is looking at 5 billion yuan, which would make them the largest external investors in the round. DeepSeek is also in final talks with China's national artificial intelligence fund, gaming developer NetEase (9999.HK), opens new tab and e-commerce giant JD.com (9618.HK), opens new tab, they said, noting that the planned number of investors was fewer than 10. DeepSeek, Liang, NetEase, JD.com and the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, which is the main backer of the national AI fund, did not ⁠immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Tencent and CATL declined to comment. The line-up underscores China's efforts to build an increasingly self-sufficient AI industry, from models to the energy infrastructure needed to power them. CATL, best known as a dominant supplier in the electric vehicle battery supply chain, has recently pushed into AI data centres, exploring opportunities to provide power equipment and energy ⁠storage solutions as AI workloads drive demand for large-scale, reliable power. Tencent has sought to promote its own AI model, Hunyuan, but trails domestic market leaders including ByteDance's Doubao and DeepSeek. A closer relationship with DeepSeek could help Tencent keep pace with rival ⁠Alibaba (9988.HK), opens new tab, which has prioritised its in-house Qwen AI model. OTHER INVESTORS IN THE MIX DeepSeek is expected to complete the round within the next couple of weeks, said the people, cautioning that financial details could still change. The startup has ⁠to date not made any statements about whether it plans an initial public offering sometime in the future. Hong Kong-headquartered IDG Capital and Monolith Capital are also among the prospective investors, the people said. IDG declined to comment while Monolith did not respond to a request for comment. Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Edwina Gibbs Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

DeepSeek slated to draw $7 billion in maiden fundraising, sources say

DeepSeek became China's national AI champion and garnered global fame early last year, when its V3 and R1 models drew widespread praise in Silicon Valley and challenged U.S. assumptions about China's AI capabilities. The startup's founder, Liang Wenfeng, has committed 20 billion yuan of his own money, the people said, adding that tech conglomerate Tencent is considering 10 billion yuan and battery giant CATL is looking at 5 billion yuan, which would make them the largest external investors in the round. DeepSeek is also in final talks with China's national artificial intelligence fund, gaming developer NetEase and e-commerce giant JD.com, they said, noting that the planned number of investors was fewer than 10. DeepSeek, Liang, NetEase, JD.com and the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, which is the main backer of the national AI fund, did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Tencent and CATL declined to comment. The line-up underscores China's efforts to build an increasingly self-sufficient AI industry, from models to the energy infrastructure needed to power them. CATL, best known as a dominant supplier in the electric vehicle battery supply chain, has recently pushed into AI data centres, exploring opportunities to provide power equipment and energy storage solutions as AI workloads drive demand for large-scale, reliable power. Tencent has sought to promote its own AI model, Hunyuan, but trails domestic market leaders including ByteDance's Doubao and DeepSeek. A closer relationship with DeepSeek could help Tencent keep pace with rival Alibaba, which has prioritised its in-house Qwen AI model.

DeepSeek lines up its first outside money: a $7bn round at up to $59bn

Tencent and CATL are weighing the largest external cheques in a round that would formalise China's AI champion as a commercial company. DeepSeek has spent eighteen months as the most talked-about AI lab that almost nobody could invest in. That is about to change. The Chinese startup is slated to raise roughly 50 billion yuan, about $7bn, in its first external funding round, according to people familiar with the matter, in a deal that would value it at between $52bn and $59bn. The composition of the round is as telling as the size. Founder Liang Wenfeng is committing 20 billion yuan of his own money, a controlling share of the raise that keeps him firmly in charge of a company he has run with unusual independence. Tencent is weighing about 10 billion yuan and battery giant CATL around 5 billion yuan, which would make them the largest outside backers. Hong Kong's IDG Capital and Monolith Capital are also among the prospective investors. The round is expected to close within weeks. That a founder is funding a quarter of his own mega-round is not how Silicon Valley does things, and it is rather the point. DeepSeek emerged from High-Flyer, the quantitative hedge fund Liang built, and has been bankrolled largely from that base. Taking outside capital changes the company's character. It formalises DeepSeek as a commercial entity with investors to answer to, after a period in which it behaved more like a research project that happened to ship. DeepSeek became China's national AI champion early last year, when its V3 and R1 models drew genuine admiration in Silicon Valley and forced an uncomfortable recalibration of how far ahead American labs actually were. The models were cheap to train, strong on reasoning, and openly released, a combination that unsettled the assumption that frontier AI required frontier-sized budgets and closed weights. What the company has not had, until now, is a revenue engine to match the reputation. The reporting around this round makes clear that commercialisation is the agenda. DeepSeek is plotting revenue efforts, and a $7bn war chest buys the compute, the talent and the runway to build products rather than just publish papers. The investor list points at the constraint everyone in Chinese AI is working around. CATL is a battery company, not an obvious AI backer, but it is also a national industrial champion with capital and an interest in the energy demands of large-scale compute. Tencent brings distribution and cloud. Domestic strategic money, rather than the global venture capital that funds American labs, is doing the heavy lifting, partly by necessity given US export controls on advanced chips and the political friction around foreign investment in Chinese AI. A valuation approaching $59bn would still leave DeepSeek a fraction of the size of OpenAI or Anthropic on paper, both of which have been valued in the hundreds of billions. But the comparison flatters the Americans in dollar terms while understating what DeepSeek has achieved on a fraction of the spend. The company's whole reputation rests on doing more with less. The question the round raises is whether outside money changes that discipline. Investors expecting a return tend to push for the kind of spending, and the kind of secrecy, that DeepSeek has so far avoided. The company built its name on cheap, open models. The next chapter, written with $7bn and a board, will test whether that identity survives contact with commercial expectations. The cheques are nearly signed. What they buy is still being decided.

China's DeepSeek close to $7.4bn raise at $59bn valuation

Tencent, China's state-backed AI fund and DeepSeek's founder are expected to take part in the round. Chinese AI leader DeepSeek is close to finalising a $7.4bn funding round led by Tencent and Contemporary Amperex, with participation from the $8bn state-backed National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, multiple publications have reported. The round is expected to value the GenAI darling between $52bn and $59bn, sources add, placing it leagues ahead of rival Moonshot, which raised $2bn last month at a valuation of $20bn. External participants are expected to invest around $4.4bn, with Tencent pitching in $1.5bn, and battery giant CATL, around $735m, while company founder Liang Wenfeng has personally invested around $2.94bn, reports suggest. Alibaba was also reported to be taking part in this round, while Tencent was reported to have proposed a 20pc stake in the company. The company is expected to complete the round in the next couple of weeks. DeepSeek's latest round comes as AI contemporaries across the world are raising capital to compete in the fast advancing race for enterprise adoption. Claude-parent Anthropic just announced that it filed to go public earlier this week, with reports estimating the company's valuation could soar above $1trn. This comes just after the AI leader raised $65bn at a $965bn valuation in its last private round. OpenAI, recently valued at $852bn, meanwhile, is also planning to go public. CNBC reported that the company was preparing to confidentially file for an IPO late last month. DeepSeek's popularity surged last year after the company launched its model R1, whose cost effectiveness and performance sent Silicon Valley leaders in a flurry, igniting accusations of theft. R1 was trained using lower-capacity Nvidia chips. The company took more than a year after R1 to release its long-awaited V4 large language model, which, it claimed at the time, "redefine[d] the state-of-the-art for open models". V4 was hyped to be the company's most important launch since R1, and V3 in late 2024. Other AI rivals in the country, in the meanwhile, made a flurry of launches ahead of V4 to avoid competition, including Alibaba's Qwen3.5; ByteDance's Seedance 2.0; Zhipu's GLM-5, trained entirely using Chinese chips; MiniMax, which released M2.5; and the Alibaba-backed Moonshot AI, which came out with Kimi K2.5. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

DeepSeek Eyes $7.4B Funding Round At Up To $59B Valuation - JD.com (NASDAQ:JD), NetEase (NASDAQ:NTES)

DeepSeek Eyes $7.4 Billion Funding Round At Up To $59 Billion Valuation As Tencent, CATL Back China's AI Champion: Report Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is reportedly preparing to raise about $7.4 billion in its first external funding round, a move that could value the company at as much as $59 billion. DeepSeek Funding Round Could Value Startup At Up To $59 Billion DeepSeek is seeking roughly 50 billion yuan in fresh capital, with the fundraising expected to value the company at between 350 billion yuan and 400 billion yuan after the investment, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The round could close within the next few weeks, though terms remain subject to change. Founder Liang Wenfeng is reportedly contributing 20 billion yuan of his own capital. DeepSeek gained international attention after its V3 and R1 models drew praise in Silicon Valley and challenged assumptions about China's AI capabilities. Tencent And CATL Emerge As Key DeepSeek Investors DeepSeek did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comments. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: mundissima on Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

DeepSeek Nears Deal to Raise $7.4 Billion for Open-Source AI | PYMNTS.com

That's according to a report Wednesday (June 3) by Bloomberg News, which says the financing would mark one of China's largest ever startup funding rounds. Social media giant Tencent is among the investors in the round, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Also taking part, the same sources said, is the government-backed National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund. According to the report, DeepSeek's senior management has told potential investors that the company will focus on groundbreaking AI research instead of short-term commercialization. Founder Liang Wenfeng -- who is himself investing in the funding round -- committed in at least one meeting with investors to continue developing open-source AI models while working toward a larger goal of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), Bloomberg added. The report also points out that AI companies -- including those in China -- are facing increasing pressure to show results following hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investments. DeepSeek's "research-first philosophy," Bloomberg continued, comes as companies like OpenAI to Anthropic are exploring stock market listings and multiple paths to producing revenue. The news outlet had reported last month that DeepSeek was hoping to raise $10 billion in a round that would value the company at $45 billion. DeepSeek sent shockwaves through the AI industry in early 2025 when it introduced an AI model that offered comparable performance to those of American rivals OpenAI and Meta while using substantially fewer Nvidia chips. The news caused Nvidia to suffer one of the largest drops in market value ever recorded, as investors began to rethink the need to invest in AI hardware. PYMNTS wrote earlier this year about research by the company illustrating a new way to train large language models that lets performance improve without a proportional increase in training costs. This runs counter to one of the main assumptions that has shaped the way the AI space has evolved over the last several years, the report said. "If approaches like DeepSeek's prove reliable beyond research settings, they could alter the economics of AI deployment in sectors that depend on cost discipline, including commerce, payments, and enterprise software," PYMNTS added. "Lower training costs make it easier to build and maintain specialized models tailored to specific workflows, rather than relying on generalized systems that are expensive to update."

DeepSeek set for $7 bln fundraise with Tencent, CATL in the lead- Reuters By Investing.com

Investing.com-- DeepSeek is set to raise about 50 billion yuan ($7 billion) in its first ever funding round, with major Chinese technology firms including Tencent and CATL as the lead investors, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The fundraising could value the company between 350 billion and 400 billion yuan ($52-$59 billion), the Reuters report said, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Get more breaking news on China's top AI firms by subscribing to InvestingPro Internet giant Tencent and battery maker CATL are considering contributing 10 billion yuan and 5 billion yuan, respectively, to the round, Reuters reported. This would make them the largest external investors in the round. Deepseek founder Liang Wenfeng has committed 20 billion yuan of his own money to the startup, Reuters reported. China's national artificial intelligence fund, videogame developer Netease, and e-commerce major JD.Com are also in final talks to participate in Deepseek's funding round, the report said, with the total number of planned investors to be less than 10. Deepseek is expected to complete the round in the next couple of weeks. The startup has emerged as one of China's top artificial intelligence firms after its V3 and R1 models garnered global attention early last year. Since then, the company has released a slew of new open source AI models, most recently being the V4 series. The company's models were praised for offering performance that was comparable to models from stalwarts such as OpenAI and Anthropic while using substantially lower computational resources and training costs.

DeepSeek set to raise $7 billion in first funding round: sources

STORY: AI startup DeepSeek is expected to raise around $7.4 billion in its first funding round. That's according to sources, who said investors will include tech firm Tencent and battery giant CATL. They added the fundraising could value the Chinese company after the investment at between $52 billion and $59 billion. DeepSeek is also in final talks with China's national AI fund, the sources said, as well as other possible investors including e-commerce titan JD.com. DeepSeek became China's national AI champion and scored global fame early last year. Its V3 and R1 models drew widespread praise in Silicon Valley and challenged U.S. assumptions about China's AI capabilities. The country's national AI fund, and lineup of potential DeepSeek investors, show China's efforts to build a more self-sufficient AI industry. The sources said DeepSeek is expected to complete the funding round within the next couple of weeks. The startup has to date not made any statements about whether it plans an initial public offering sometime in the future.

DeepSeek slated to raise $7 billion in maiden funding round, sources say

June 3 (Reuters) - DeepSeek, China's best-known AI startup, is set to raise about 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) in its first funding round from investors including Tencent Holdings and CATL, people with knowledge of the matter said. The fundraising could value the company after the investment at between 350 billion yuan and 400 billion yuan, or between $52 billion and $59 billion, the people said, declining to be identified because the information is confidential. DeepSeek became China's national AI champion and garnered global fame early last year, when its V3 and R1 models drew widespread praise in Silicon Valley and challenged U.S. assumptions about China's AI capabilities. The funding round marks a reversal of DeepSeek's years-long strategy of not seeking outside capital, a policy enabled by founder Liang Wenfeng's quant hedge fund High-Flyer. But the fast-moving AI industry has expanded beyond the low-cost, open-source chatbot models that powered DeepSeek's breakthrough. Instead the focus is now on AI agents that can perform more complex tasks with less human intervention than chatbots, while requiring significantly more computing power. DeepSeek said in April that its next-generation, agent-focused V4 model redefined the state-of-the-art for open-source models, but third-party evaluations suggest it lags the best models from some U.S. and Chinese competitors. The funding round ranks among China's largest private tech fundraisings. Even so, it pales in comparison to the $65 billion raised by Anthropic last month and the $122 billion raised by OpenAI in March - both of which benefit from massive fluid Western capital markets. DeepSeek faces geopolitical constraints that confine its fundraising largely to China and also dictate its corporate and hardware strategies, said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a Beijing-based managing director at Ankura China Advisors. "Western export bans mean DeepSeek cannot access frontier American silicon. Without the ability to buy that hardware, they have no reason to match the multi-billion-dollar computing budgets of their U.S. rivals," he added. TENCENT, CATL SET TO BE BIGGEST EXTERNAL INVESTORS Founder Liang has committed 20 billion yuan of his own money in this funding round, the people said. They added that tech conglomerate Tencent is considering 10 billion yuan and battery giant CATL is looking at 5 billion yuan, which would make them the largest external investors. DeepSeek is also in final talks with China's national artificial intelligence fund, gaming developer NetEase and e-commerce giant JD.com, they said, noting that the planned number of investors was fewer than 10. DeepSeek, Liang, NetEase, JD.com and the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, which is the main backer of the national AI fund, did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Tencent and CATL declined to comment. The line-up underscores China's efforts to build an increasingly self-sufficient AI industry, from models to the energy infrastructure needed to power them. CATL, best known as a dominant supplier in the electric vehicle battery supply chain, has recently pushed into AI data centres, exploring opportunities to provide power equipment and energy storage solutions as AI workloads drive demand for large-scale, reliable power. Tencent has sought to promote its own AI model, Hunyuan, but trails domestic market leaders including ByteDance's Doubao and DeepSeek. A closer relationship with DeepSeek could help Tencent keep pace with rival Alibaba, which has prioritised its in-house Qwen AI model. OTHER INVESTORS IN THE MIX DeepSeek is expected to complete the round within the next couple of weeks, said the people, cautioning that financial details and the investor line-up could still change. While OpenAI and Anthropic are both planning initial public offerings, DeepSeek has to date not made any statements about any future listing plans. Hong Kong-headquartered IDG Capital and Monolith Management are also among the prospective investors, the people said. IDG declined to comment while Monolith did not respond to a request for comment. (Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)