DeepSeek Nears $7.4bn Round at up to $59bn Valuation

DeepSeek is nearing a 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) funding round that could value the company at 350-400 billion yuan ($52-59 billion). Fewer than 10 investors are expected to take part and the deal could close within weeks, though terms may change.

Founder Liang Wenfeng plans to commit 20 billion yuan to the round. Tencent is considering about 10 billion yuan and battery maker CATL about 5 billion yuan, which would make them the largest external backers.

DeepSeek is in talks with China’s national artificial intelligence fund, gaming developer NetEase, e-commerce group JD.com and investment firms that include IDG Capital and Monolith Capital.

The company drew attention after releasing its V3 and R1 models last year. Those models attracted international interest and raised DeepSeek’s profile among Chinese model developers.

For Tencent, taking a stake would give exposure to a leading model developer and could complement its Hunyuan model. Tencent has trailed some competitors in model development, including ByteDance’s Doubao and DeepSeek.

CATL’s potential investment reflects its push into data centre power and energy storage. The company has explored power equipment and large-scale storage as AI workloads increase demand for electricity, cooling and backup capacity.

The investor lineup would connect companies across the AI value chain: cloud and consumer platforms, model developers and industrial energy suppliers. Tencent can provide consumer reach and cloud resources, NetEase and JD.com offer platform use cases, and CATL brings energy and storage expertise.

China has been building domestic capabilities in chips, cloud infrastructure, data centres, model training and the energy systems needed to run advanced AI models. State-backed and private investors have shown interest in financing firms that contribute to those areas.

If completed at the expected size, the round would be among the largest first-time financings for a Chinese AI startup. The final investor list and the exact financial terms remain subject to change during the closing process.