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DeepSeek to Raise at Least $12 Billion in Tencent-Backed Funding, Bloomberg News Reports
The round has drawn large commitments from CATL and Tencent as investor demand surged after DeepSeek’s latest AI model release.
On Tuesday, October 6, 2026, DeepSeek neared securing at least 80 billion yuan in funding, exceeding its initial capital-raising target ahead of a landmark IPO planned for early 2027.
Battery pioneer Contemporary Amperex Technology and WeChat-operator Tencent Holdings committed major capital to the financing round, with investor interest outstripping the company's original goal of about 50 billion yuan.
Building on earlier support including a 10 billion yuan investment from Tencent, DeepSeek plans to deploy at least 160,000 Huawei Technologies accelerators at a data center in Inner Mongolia.
Following the close of this funding round, the startup expects to restructure the company to prepare for its upcoming public market debut, according to people familiar with the matter.
Founder Liang Wenfeng aims to push artificial intelligence boundaries, positioning the company to compete against Silicon Valley leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic with open-source models.
With its financing round, the Chinese AI company clearly exceeds its own goal. The capital injection is considered an important step on the way to a possible IPO in early 2027.