DeepSeek wrapping up $15 billion fundraising to fuel AI race

HONG KONG, Oct 22 — Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is wrapping up ​its latest funding round having generated about 100 billion yuan ($14.98 billion) from existing and new investors, two people with ‌knowledge of the matter said on Thursday.

Battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) and WeChat operator ⁠Tencent Holdings were among the ​biggest investors in the round, ⁠said one of the people, who both declined to be named ‌as the information ‌was confidential.

The fundraising is set to be complete in the ⁠coming days, but financial details ⁠are not ironclad and could still change, the other person said.

DeepSeek, CATL and Tencent could not be immediately reached for comment.

On Thursday, Bloomberg first reported, citing sources, that DeepSeek had raised $15 billion in the latest funding round, with CATL and Tencent ‌as its main backers.

DeepSeek will have ​doubled its original fundraising target of 50 billion yuan, underscoring strong interest from investors - many backed by the state and big corporations - as China aims to get ahead in the AI race against the US.

The fundraising also signals that DeepSeek is getting closer to tapping public markets. In September, Reuters reported ​that the company had hired CITIC Securities to prepare for a potential ‌STAR Market initial ‌public ⁠offering.

Last month, the company released its latest model, DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, which it said was designed for greater capability, faster inference, higher throughput and scaling to larger models.

($1 = 6.6749 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Kane Wu ‌in Hong Kong; additional ​reporting by Devika Nair in Bengaluru, ‌Yantoultra Ngui in Hong ⁠Kong, Zoey ​Zhang in Shanghai and the Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Ronojoy Mazumdar and ​Thomas Derpinghaus)

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