DeepSeek closes around CNY 10B funding round led by CATL and Tencent

According to a Securities Times report confirmed by multiple primary-market investors, DeepSeek has completed a funding round of roughly 100 billion CNY (15 billion USD), setting a new record for a single financing round in China's AI industry. Existing shareholders CATL and Tencent Holdings participated as the main investors, with IDG Capital, Lixing Capital and Shixiang Capital continuing to follow on. Newcomers were largely industrial capital, including Lenovo-affiliated Legend Capital, GigaDevice-affiliated Shixi Capital, Geely Auto's industry fund, and SMSC Capital, with Hengdian Capital joining at a later stage. The round's target was raised from an earlier 80 billion CNY to 100 billion CNY.

An investor told the Securities Times that current large-model development is essentially an engineering problem, with no significant secrets left in the underlying architecture and the core moat lying in training datasets and compute resources. On that logic, DeepSeek imposed explicit resource-synergy requirements on this round, requiring every prospective investor to state in writing what data support and business synergies they can offer. Under this criterion, institutions with deep industrial resources and synergy capabilities received larger allocations, with Hengdian Capital among those securing substantial份额. This is DeepSeek's second financing round, following its first round of external funding in June this year. The latest disclosed state stops at the participants, the upward revision of the amount and the investment conditions; no further information on valuation or closing has been reported.