Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has raised about $15 billion in its latest funding round. According to Bloomberg, the deal values the company at $74 billion before the new money. As a result, DeepSeek is now one of the most valuable AI firms in the world. In particular, battery maker CATL and tech giant Tencent are among the biggest backers.
Liang Wenfeng founded DeepSeek in Hangzhou, China, in 2023. Before starting DeepSeek, he ran a hedge fund called High-Flyer, which paid for the company’s early research. In fact, the company first gained global attention in early 2025 with its free R1 AI model. Since then, it has released several new models, including the V4 family and V4.1-Flash.
Indeed, the latest round doubled DeepSeek’s original target of about $7 billion. Specifically, strong demand from investors pushed the total to $15 billion over the past few weeks. On top of that, other backers in the round include Geely, Midea, and IDG Capital. Consequently, DeepSeek has now raised about $22 billion in total from outside investors.
Reportedly, DeepSeek now earns about $1 billion a year, more than double from a few months ago. However, part of that growth came from raising prices on its paid AI tools, not just from gaining new users. The company has also hired CITIC Securities to prepare for a possible stock market listing in Shanghai. As a result, a public offering could come as early as 2027.
Meanwhile, the funding comes days after the US ordered its government agencies to remove DeepSeek’s AI tools over security concerns. Despite this, Chinese investors continue to back the company. Furthermore, DeepSeek’s open models now perform close to those of top US labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. The company runs its cloud service on chips from China’s Huawei, instead of relying on chips from NVIDIA.