DeepSeek has secured roughly 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) in its latest funding round, as the Chinese AI company prepares for a potential initial public offering next year, according to Bloomberg.
Major investors in the round include Chinese tech giant Tencent and battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Notably, DeepSeek raised its financing target at least twice from 50 billion yuan during talks with investors, the report said. The fresh funding follows a $7.4 billion round that closed in June, which valued the company at more than $50 billion.
Reuters reported that the latest funding round is expected to close in the coming days.
Meanwhile, DeepSeek has been preparing for a potential IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market. The company has tapped CITIC Securities to begin the process, Reuters reported last month.
DeepSeek continues its push to compete with global rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
Last month, it launched the DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash model, designed for greater capability, faster inference, and higher throughput.
The company also released software it developed with Huawei to program Huawei's Ascend chips last month. It said the tools included the TileLang high-level programming language, compute libraries, and distributed communication libraries.
The Latent has reached out to DeepSeek, Tencent and CATL for further information.