DeepSeek completes a new funding round of about 100 billion yuan and is preparing for a STAR Market IPO

Industrial capital giants are once again rushing to throw money at DeepSeek.

On October 22, multiple media outlets cited Bloomberg in reporting that DeepSeek had completed a new round of financing, raising about 100 billion yuan, with CATL and Tencent as the main contributors to this round. This set the record for the largest financing in China's AI industry.

According to sources, this round initially targeted 50 billion yuan in fundraising, but subscription demand was so intense that the target was raised to 80 billion yuan and ultimately settled at 100 billion yuan.

The market had in fact long anticipated this 100-billion-yuan financing.

Months earlier, DeepSeek had secured its first external financing (Series A). Tianyancha shows that DeepSeek only launched its first external fundraising in April 2026, with the deal closing in June, raising about 51 billion yuan at a valuation of 340 billion yuan.

Image: Hurun 2026 Global Unicorn List

In the first-round list, Liang Wenfeng personally contributed 20 billion yuan, making him the largest single investor; Tencent put in 10 billion yuan, the CATL ecosystem 5 billion yuan, and NetEase, JD.com and IDG each around 3 billion yuan.

At the time, word had already spread that investment intentions exceeded 100 billion yuan, but Liang Wenfeng accepted only the best 51 billion yuan.

In other words, nearly 50 billion yuan in intended investment funds was still waiting to get in. That also kept news of a second financing round simmering ever since the Series A closed.

There was another noteworthy detail in the first round: apart from the National AI Industry Investment Fund, external investors had to hold shares through a limited partnership structure, without voting rights, and faced a five-year lock-up period. Liang Wenfeng still controlled close to 100% of the voting rights.

By that logic, after the second round raises 100 billion yuan, control of the company will most likely remain firmly in the founder's hands. So what are the investors after? The answer may not be complicated.

01. The "big backers" are again Tencent and CATL

Take Tencent and CATL, which invested in both rounds. What Tencent wants is priority participation in ecosystem entry points; its 10 billion yuan in the Series A bought a front-row seat, ensuring it has priority cooperation space when DeepSeek's model capabilities are later connected to scenarios such as WeChat, gaming and cloud businesses.

What CATL wants is synergy in energy infrastructure—energy storage peak-valley arbitrage, direct green power supply, and supporting energy-consumption quotas. Its core goal is to bring the biggest cost of data centers—electricity bills—into its own business territory.

One controls the traffic entry point, the other controls power. Both are betting at the same time because they value DeepSeek's positioning as a computing-power foundation.

From this it is easy to see that industrial capital is racing to get in not just for a financial investment in the large-model track, but because it does not want to miss the chance to bind itself to a top domestic traffic platform and hardcore new-energy infrastructure.

Of course, business synergy and positioning are only one factor. More importantly, DeepSeek has shown the outside world the possibility of its commercialization.

QuestMobile data shows that in September 2026 DeepSeek had 123 million active users, second only to Doubao and Qwen. However, its consumer app still remains free, ad-free and subscription-free, and its huge user traffic has not yet been directly monetized.

Image source: Quest Mobile

Its real revenue engine is on the B-side: API calls are the main source of revenue. In the first seven months of 2026 it recognized about 475 million yuan in revenue, ten times the full-year figure for 2025, and by September annualized revenue had exceeded 1 billion US dollars.

A key change is reflected in its pricing strategy. Over the past two years, DeepSeek has carried the label of "price butcher"; in August this year it raised API prices by 2.3 to 4.5 times, and customer retention remained stable after the increase, with no obvious churn.

Just days before news of this financing round broke, it also announced that its web search and crawling APIs would be billed per call starting November 1, priced at 5 yuan per 1,000 successful requests.

The signal from the product side is very clear: the consumer side will continue on the inclusive path, while every B-side capability must gradually move toward profitability and accounting.

At the same time, DeepSeek has begun increasing spending on AI data center construction and continuing to develop open-source models for the Chinese and overseas markets.

02. Will it become the largest IPO fundraising in domestic history?

On the same day, October 22, Cailian Press reported that Anthropic could file its S-1 prospectus as early as this Friday, with the market expecting an IPO valuation of 1.8 trillion to 2 trillion US dollars and fundraising of up to 100 billion US dollars, potentially ranking among the largest IPOs in history.

At this stage, it is still burning cash. In the first half of 2026, Anthropic had revenue of 16.3 billion US dollars and a net loss of 80.7 billion US dollars, of which 72 billion US dollars was accounting cost for convertible notes; future computing-power procurement may require another 750 billion US dollars.

However, adjusted metrics have improved somewhat: second-quarter inference gross margin rose to 70%–85% and operating profit turned positive, but it is still far from stable free cash flow.

A question follows: if we take Anthropic as a reference, can DeepSeek set the record for the largest IPO fundraising in domestic history?

According to comprehensive reports, DeepSeek has hired CITIC Securities to prepare for a STAR Market IPO; Yan Wentao, former partner at Hillhouse Venture Capital, arrived as the company's CFO in late September this year, and the company plans to submit its application as early as late 2026.

At the same time, market estimates show that DeepSeek's post-listing market value could range from 1.5 trillion to 2.5 trillion yuan.

At the close on October 22, the "king of stocks" by A-share market value was ICBC, with its share price at 8.59 yuan and a market value of about 3.06 trillion yuan.

After this financing round is completed, DeepSeek's valuation will reach 500 billion yuan, 2.1 times the combined market value of Zhipu and MiniMax.

DeepSeek still has room for imagination in its sprint toward the largest IPO fundraising scale in domestic history. But there is another question: how can the market absorb such a massive fundraising scale?

So, is it possible for DeepSeek's listing and fundraising path to follow in the footsteps of Zhipu and MiniMax?

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This article comes from the WeChat public account "Yuanmeihui", author: Xie Chunsheng, published by 36Kr with authorization.