DeepSeek raises $15 billion in one of China's biggest funding rounds

DeepSeek has raised about $15 billion, roughly 100 billion yuan, in what Bloomberg reports is one of the largest funding rounds in China’s history. The round comes just two days after the United States ordered federal civilian agencies to remove the Chinese AI lab’s technology from their systems over security concerns.

Potential investors in the round include CATL, the Chinese battery maker, and Tencent, the company behind WeChat, according to the Bloomberg report. DeepSeek did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

The new round follows a June fundraising in which DeepSeek raised more than $7 billion at a $50 billion valuation. In July, the Hangzhou-based company was reportedly seeking another $1.5 billion at a valuation of about $71 billion, with plans for a possible initial public offering in China as early as next year.

DeepSeek is using the capital to expand AI infrastructure and build open-weight models, meaning models whose underlying parameters are published, for customers at home and abroad, the report said, even as it faces mounting restrictions in the United States. That expansion could sharpen competition among Chinese AI developers chasing the same investors and customers.

A crowded field for Chinese AI funding

DeepSeek’s raise lands amid a broader wave of money flowing into Chinese AI startups. Moonshot AI, the developer behind the Kimi chatbot, raised $2 billion in May at a $20 billion valuation. Manus AI raised more than $500 million earlier this month. Two other Chinese AI companies, Zhipu AI and MiniMax, went public in Hong Kong in January and now carry market capitalizations of roughly $29 billion and $7.2 billion, respectively.

DeepSeek was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, who previously co-founded the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer, which helped finance the AI lab’s early work. The company drew global attention in early 2025 with its free, open-weight R1 reasoning model, which challenged the dominance of U.S. AI companies on cost and performance. Corporate ownership data analyzed by WireScreen shows Liang held an estimated 81.6% stake in DeepSeek’s Chinese operating entity following its earlier funding round.

The timing underscores a split in how DeepSeek is treated in the U.S. and in China. Washington’s directive to federal agencies reflects continued unease in the U.S. government over the security implications of Chinese AI software. Investors in China, meanwhile, are moving the opposite way, betting on DeepSeek’s technology and its plans for further growth, including a possible domestic listing.

What happens next depends on two things that remain unsettled: how DeepSeek deploys $15 billion in new capital, and whether U.S. restrictions on the company widen beyond federal agencies into other parts of government or the private sector. Confirmation of the round’s exact terms, and any response from DeepSeek itself, has not yet surfaced.