Multiple A-share companies participate in DeepSeek's new round of hundred-billion-level financing
Securities Times reporters confirmed with multiple primary-market investors that DeepSeek completed about 100 billion yuan (15 billion US dollars) in financing, with the target raised from 80 billion yuan earlier to 100 billion yuan; existing shareholders CATL and Tencent Holdings participated as major investors, while IDG Capital, Lisi Capital and Shixiang Capital continued to follow on. A-share companies including Perfect World, Century Huatong and Litong Electronics invested indirectly through two special-purpose funds, Lisi Xingshen and Shixiang Shangshi, which are sized at 7.52 billion yuan and 3.65 billion yuan respectively. This is DeepSeek's second financing round following its first round of about 51 billion yuan in June this year, with a post-money valuation of about 500 billion yuan.
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The report disclosed the scale of this financing round, the composition of investors, and the path by which industrial capital holds shares indirectly through multi-layer funds.
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Multiple A-share companies participate in DeepSeek's new round of financing.
Recently, some media reported that DeepSeek completed about 100 billion yuan (15 billion US dollars) in financing, setting a new record for a single round of financing in China's AI industry. A Securities Times reporter confirmed from multiple primary market investors that the news is true.
Industrial capital enters intensively
The reporter learned that the target for this round of financing was indeed raised from the previous 80 billion yuan to 100 billion yuan. Existing shareholders CATL and Tencent Holdings participated in this round of financing as major investors, while IDG Capital, Lisi Capital and Shixiang Capital continued to follow on. Most of the new investors are industrial capital, including Legend Capital under the Lenovo group, Shixi Capital under GigaDevice, Geely Automobile Industry Fund, SMIC Juyuan, and Hengdian Capital, which joined later.
"The current development of large models is essentially an engineering problem; there are no obvious secrets in the underlying architecture, and the core barrier lies in training datasets and computing power resources. Therefore, in this financing, DeepSeek imposed clear resource synergy requirements on investors, requiring all interested investors to explain in writing what kind of data support and business synergy they can provide to DeepSeek," an investment professional told the Securities Times reporter regarding the industrial logic of this round of financing.
Under this orientation, institutions with deep industrial resources and synergy capabilities obtained more shares; for example, Hengdian Capital and others obtained relatively large investment shares.
This is DeepSeek's second round of financing after its first external financing round in June this year. In June this year, DeepSeek completed a first round of financing of about 51 billion yuan, with a post-investment valuation of about 500 billion yuan. In addition, in September, DeepSeek appointed Yan Wentao, who had previously worked in venture capital, as CFO. Yan Wentao successively worked in investment at Tencent Investment and H Capital, and later was promoted to partner at Hillhouse Venture Capital.
Multiple A-share companies indirectly invest in DeepSeek
It is worth noting that in DeepSeek's latest round of financing, A-share listed companies such as Perfect World, Century Huatong and Litong Electronics also completed investments indirectly through two special funds, Lisi Xingshen and Shixiang Shangshi, bringing application scenarios such as game content and computing power leasing into the shareholder ecosystem.
Recently, Perfect World intensively disclosed investment progress announcements, announcing that two key external special funds had completed fundraising in full. Among them, the "Lisi Xingshen" fund reached 7.52 billion yuan, and the "Shixiang Shangshi" fund reached 3.65 billion yuan; the two funds together absorbed 11.17 billion yuan in external funds. Perfect World subscribed 50 million yuan and 100 million yuan to these two funds respectively, participating in DeepSeek shares with a total contribution of 150 million yuan.
Behind the two large special funds, Lisi Xingshen and Shixiang Shangshi, other A-share listed companies also appear. A wholly owned subsidiary of Century Huatong subscribed 650 million yuan to the partnership shares of Shixiang Shangshi (Tianjin) Venture Capital Partnership; computing power service provider Litong Electronics announced on October 22 that it would contribute 95 million yuan to subscribe to shares of Lisi Xingshen.
"Many of the new industrial capital investors in this round did not directly enter DeepSeek's core main shareholder list, but instead hold shares indirectly through a multi-layer fund structure. Both Lisi Xingshen and Shixiang Shangshi are external asset management channels for DeepSeek's current round of financing," the above investment professional told the reporter.
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