DeepSeek Raises Nearly $16 billion in Second Funding Round

DeepSeek has closed its second funding round, raising 106 billion yuan ($15.9 billion) in one of the biggest-ever fundraising deals in China’s AI sector, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

The amount is more than double DeepSeek’s original fundraising target of 50 billion yuan, reflecting strong investor appetite. The size of this round is also roughly double the company’s first-ever funding round in June, which raised more than 50 billion yuan.

DeepSeek’s valuation is now more than 600 billion yuan, including the newly raised capital, making it one of China’s most highly valued AI companies.The company is preparing to go public in the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The upsized fundraising also reflects the rising cost of compute for developing new models. DeepSeek is trying to access more of Nvidia’s advanced Blackwell chips, while also stepping up its effort to use Huawei chips for model training, The Information previously reported.

Bloomberg earlier reported the closing of DeepSeek’s funding round.