DeepSeek reportedly raises $15bn from Tencent and CATL ahead of IPO

Chinese AI lab DeepSeek has raised about 100bn yuan ($15bn), one of the largest private funding rounds ever in China. Bloomberg reported the deal on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Battery maker CATL and Tencent, which owns WeChat, were among the biggest investors. TNW has not independently verified the report, and DeepSeek has not confirmed the round.

Demand from investors pushed the size of the round up during talks. DeepSeek first aimed for 50bn yuan, then raised its target to 80bn yuan, before closing at about 100bn yuan, Bloomberg said.

The money gives the Hangzhou-based company more room to compete with the leading US labs. Even so, it still has far less to spend than OpenAI and Anthropic, which have each raised more than $100bn, according to Bloomberg.

DeepSeek drew global attention in early 2025, when it showed that strong AI models could be built at a fraction of the usual cost. The news set off a sell-off in tech stocks.

Since then, the company has spent more on data centres and on open-source models, which anyone can download and adapt.

It is also preparing for a possible stock market listing, Bloomberg has previously reported. Its cloud service already runs on chips made by China’s Huawei, despite US limits on chip exports, according to the same outlet.

The deal is DeepSeek’s second outside round this year. It raised more than $7bn in June, and a month later it was seeking new money at around a $71bn valuation.

Liang Wenfeng founded DeepSeek in 2023. He also co-founded the Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, which paid for much of the lab’s early work.

Meanwhile, the round closed two days after the US Department of Homeland Security ordered federal agencies to stop buying DeepSeek products and remove them from their systems. The order cites national security concerns, including the risk that Chinese authorities could reach US government data.