Bloomberg reported on 6 October that DeepSeek is close to securing at least 80 billion yuan ($12 billion) in funding, above its original target of about 50 billion yuan, with Tencent Holdings and Contemporary Amperex Technology among the biggest backers. People familiar with the matter said demand exceeded expectations after DeepSeek released its latest AI model. Signed term sheets could put the final amount close to 100 billion yuan, they said.
Reuters gave the dollar equivalent of 80 billion yuan as $11.93 billion and said it could not immediately verify Bloomberg’s report.
DeepSeek plans to install at least 160,000 Huawei accelerators at a data centre it is building in Inner Mongolia. AI Affairs previously reported on DeepSeek’s work with Huawei on programming tools for Ascend chips. DeepSeek is planning an initial public offering in early 2027. Rival Moonshot is also targeting an early 2027 listing after closing funding at a $50 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported.
