Chinese artificial intelligence startup Deepseek is closing in on a funding round of at least $12 billion. People familiar with the matter indicate that the total amount could approach $15 billion.
The company originally targeted a raise of about $7.5 billion at a valuation of roughly $75 billion. Battery manufacturer CATL and Tencent are contributing the largest shares to the financing.
Investors fund the latest models
Intense investor interest stems from the V4-Flash model. This system has established new benchmarks for cost and performance when compared to offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Deepseek previously closed its first external funding round in June at about $7.4 billion with a valuation above $50 billion. The startup also released preview versions of V4-Pro and V4-Flash in April.
Infrastructure plans involve Huawei hardware
Following the conclusion of the funding round, Deepseek intends to restructure for an initial public offering in early 2027. The company is currently constructing a data center featuring at least 160,000 AI chips from Huawei.
Founder Liang Wenfeng aims to continue developing open models with freely available weights. At the same time, the startup is working on its own inference chip to reduce reliance on both Nvidia and Huawei.
Read nextSouth Korea Proposes $3.49 Billion AI Funding PlanTemporary pause preceded the financing
Deepseek previously paused the funding round after viral comments by Liang regarding the company's reliance on Nvidia hardware. CATL declined to comment on the current financing. Tencent and Deepseek did not respond to requests for comment.
The startup will complete the ongoing funding round and proceed with its planned corporate restructuring.
