China's DeepSeek Raises 20 Trillion Won, Steps Up Competition with U.S. AI Firms
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek has raised about 100 billion yuan (approximately 20 trillion won) in a recent funding round. It is one of the largest fundraising rounds ever by a Chinese company.
Bloomberg reported on Wednesday (local time), citing people familiar with the matter, that DeepSeek raised its funding target at least twice during negotiations with investors.
The company first increased its target from 50 billion yuan to 80 billion yuan, before ultimately securing 100 billion yuan. Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CATL), China's largest battery maker, and Tencent, the operator of WeChat, were reportedly among the major investors.
DeepSeek is also preparing for an initial public offering (IPO). The funding is expected to pave the way for an IPO that could become one of the most closely watched listings on China's stock markets in recent years. DeepSeek has so far been significantly less well-funded than leading U.S. AI developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
Last year, DeepSeek shocked the market by demonstrating that it could develop competitive AI models at far lower cost than major AI companies in Silicon Valley. The news also wiped about $1 trillion off the market capitalization of AI-related companies in global capital markets.
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DeepSeek has recently increased investment in expanding its AI data centers and developing open-source models for markets in China and abroad. It has been putting pressure on competitors by releasing a series of high-performance, low-cost models, while also attracting customers in overseas markets, including the United States. Bloomberg said the funding round "demonstrates DeepSeek's ambition to compete in the global market with companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI."
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