DeepSeek Seeks 100 Billion Yuan in Second Funding Round at Flat 500 Billion Valuation to Accelerate IPO

According to IT Home, this is DeepSeek's second funding round. Reports suggest that new and existing shareholders are each contributing roughly half of the total investment amount. Notably, the doubling of the fundraising amount has not driven up the company's overall valuation; DeepSeek's current pre-money valuation remains at approximately 500 billion yuan.

Multiple independent sources familiar with the deal state that new investors in this round include Shixi Capital, SMIC Juyuan, CPE Yuanfeng, Legend Capital, and Geely, primarily consisting of strategic industrial investors. Additionally, original shareholders from the first round are also part of this transaction list, including CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited), Tencent, IDG Capital, Lishi Capital, and Shixiang Capital. Among them, CATL is increasing its stake, planning to invest an additional approximately 10 billion yuan, compared to its initial contribution of about 5 billion yuan in the first round.

Further Reading

As previously reported by IT Home, DeepSeek's first external financing round began in April 2026 and closed at the end of June, with a total scale of approximately 51 billion yuan and a post-money valuation approaching 400 billion yuan. This marked the largest single-round financing in China's AI large model industry to date. Founder Liang Wenfeng personally contributed approximately 20 billion yuan, making him the largest single investor. Tencent invested about 10 billion yuan, while the CATL system (including CATL and Puquan Capital) contributed around 5 billion yuan. NetEase, JD.com, Lishi Capital, and IDG Capital each invested approximately 3 billion yuan. Zhengxin Valley Investment and Shixiang Technology each contributed about 1.5 billion yuan, and the National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund invested approximately 980 million yuan. The new investors in this round largely possess distinct industrial backgrounds: Shixi Capital was established by a joint investment team led by GigaDevice, a leading memory chip manufacturer, focusing on integrated circuit design and semiconductor materials; SMIC Juyuan is backed by SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation); Legend Capital is an investment platform under Lenovo Holdings; and Geely is a leading automotive OEM. Caijing noted that compared to the first round, Liang Wenfeng showed a stronger preference for strategic industrial investors capable of empowering DeepSeek across upstream and downstream supply chains in this second round. While advancing its financing, DeepSeek is also accelerating its IPO timeline. According to previous reports by Caijing, since late August 2026, DeepSeek has been engaging with multiple investment banks to prepare for a listing on the STAR Market, having already hired CITIC Securities. The plan is to submit the application as early as the end of 2026, targeting a listing in 2027. Deal sources further revealed that starting from late September 2026, sponsor securities firms have been assisting DeepSeek in vetting investor backgrounds, requiring investors to convert certain dedicated funds into blind pool structures for filing purposes. This ensures that such funds count as a single shareholder when calculating the number of shareholders for the IPO application, thereby avoiding the regulatory red line where underlying LPs are penetrated and merged into the limit of 200 shareholders. Additionally, Yan Wentao, formerly a partner at Hillhouse Venture Capital, joined DeepSeek as CFO in late September 2026. Public records show that DeepSeek was founded in 2023 by Zhejiang Jiuzhang Asset Management Co., Ltd. (formerly Hangzhou High-Flyer Technology Co., Ltd.), a quantitative hedge fund. In September 2026, DeepSeek released its latest model, DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash. Furthermore, reports indicate that its annualized revenue has surpassed $1 billion.