Deepseek is raising at least $12 billion in new funding backed by CATL and Tencent, with the Chinese AI startup targeting a 2027 IPO.

Deepseek is close to raising at least $12 billion in fresh funding, with the total potentially approaching $15 billion, according to Bloomberg reports. The Chinese AI startup originally aimed to raise approximately $7.5 billion at a valuation of around $75 billion, but strong investor appetite has pushed negotiations significantly higher. Battery manufacturer CATL and technology giant Tencent are contributing the largest shares to the round.

The surge in investor interest reflects the success of Deepseek's V4-Flash model, which has established new benchmarks for cost efficiency and performance against competitors including Anthropic and OpenAI. CATL declined to comment on the investment, while Tencent and Deepseek did not respond to requests for confirmation.

Following the round's close, Deepseek plans to restructure the company in preparation for an initial public offering in early 2027. The company is constructing a data center equipped with at least 160,000 AI chips sourced from Huawei. Founder Liang Wenfeng has indicated his commitment to continuing development of open-source models with freely available weights.

The funding round had paused earlier after comments from Liang regarding the company's reliance on Nvidia chips generated significant public attention. In June, Deepseek closed its first external funding round at approximately $7.4 billion, valuing the company above $50 billion. The company released V4-Pro and V4-Flash as preview versions in April and is simultaneously developing its own inference chip to reduce dependence on Nvidia and Huawei components.