THE SHORT VERSION
● Round — about 100 billion yuan, roughly $15 billion
● Pre-money — about 500 billion yuan, roughly $75 billion
● Investors — CATL, Tencent, Meituan, Geely, GigaDevice
● Status — terms could still change, per Reuters
Reuters reports DeepSeek is nearing a round of about 100 billion yuan, roughly $15 billion, at a pre-money valuation near 500 billion yuan, about $75 billion. Terms could still change.
The investor list is the part worth noting. CATL makes batteries. Geely makes cars. GigaDevice makes memory chips. Meituan delivers food. Only Tencent is a conventional technology investor. This is Chinese industrial capital funding a frontier lab directly, rather than the venture-and-sovereign-fund pattern that finances US labs.
Put it next to the week's other numbers and the gap is stark: DeepSeek raising $15 billion at $75 billion while OpenAI raises up to $30 billion at $1.25 trillion. DeepSeek's models have repeatedly landed within reach of frontier benchmarks at a fraction of the price — V4.1-Flash is on your shortlist if cost per token matters — and it is being funded at roughly a sixteenth of the valuation.
Sources
TechStartups