DeepSeek's $12 Billion Funding Round Draws Tencent, CATL

DeepSeek is close to completing a funding round of at least 80 billion yuan, roughly $12 billion, with Tencent and the battery maker CATL among its largest contributors, according to a Bloomberg report published on October 6, 2026. The DeepSeek $12 billion funding round would be about 60% larger than the 50 billion yuan the Hangzhou lab originally sought, and Bloomberg said investor interest outstripped expectations after the release of DeepSeek's latest model. The company has not confirmed the figures, so they are best read as reported terms rather than a closed deal.

DeepSeek

Moonshot AI

MiniMax

Z.ai

DeepSeek and the Chinese AI labs whose listings and rounds frame its next step.

80B yuanReported raise, about $12BAt least, per Bloomberg

50B yuanOriginal targetRound expanded on demand

Up to 100B yuanPossible final totalBased on signed term sheets, per reports

Early 2027Planned IPO windowVenue reported as Shanghai STAR

The DeepSeek $12 billion funding round, in detail

Per Bloomberg, as relayed by Investing.com and others, the round could reach close to 100 billion yuan based on term sheets already signed, with proceeds earmarked for computing infrastructure, model development and hiring. Tencent and CATL are named as the largest participants. Neither the final valuation nor the exact allocation had been disclosed in the reports reviewed for this article, so this post does not assign one. One report put DeepSeek's valuation at about $74 billion before this announcement, consistent with the 500 billion yuan figure reported in August.

For context, this is the third distinct financing headline in about two months. Our August coverage described a reopened round of close to $8 billion at about $74 billion, and our September analysis of the revenue run rate cited a roughly $7.5 billion target at a similar valuation. The new figure is a larger raise on the same underlying round, not a separate one.

DeepSeek raise size by stage

Approximate raise in billions of US dollars. The green bar is the reported first round; grey bars are targets and reports of an unsigned round.

Sources: Fortune via AI Weekly (June round), Bloomberg (Aug 6 and Oct 6, 2026), The Information via Dealroom (Sep 24, 2026). Hover a bar for details.

What changed: size, and a venue question

Two things differ from the earlier coverage. The first is size: the reported raise has moved from about $7.5 billion to at least $12 billion. The second is the listing venue, and here the sources need care. Some summaries of the October 6 news framed the planned IPO as a Hong Kong listing in the first quarter of 2027. The reporting this article could verify says otherwise. Bloomberg's account, as relayed by several outlets, gives only an early 2027 window and names no exchange. Earlier reporting from Reuters and The Standard says DeepSeek hired CITIC Securities to prepare a domestic listing on Shanghai's STAR Market, and Fortune's reporting, via AI Weekly, pointed to Q2 2027. The Hong Kong, Q1 2027 timetable belongs to a different company: Moonshot AI.

The honest summary is that the venue and timing are not final. The Standard quotes the company's position that the timing, size and valuation of an offering have not been determined, and a venue can change as a process matures. The evidence today favors Shanghai.

The Tencent Seafront Towers, Tencent's headquarters complex in Nanshan District, Shenzhen — The Tencent Seafront Towers (Binhai Building) in Shenzhen, Tencent's headquarters. The photo illustrates one of the reported lead backers and does not depict DeepSeek or this transaction.

Why Tencent and CATL matter as backers

The investor list reads differently from a typical venture syndicate. In the first round, reported at about 50 billion yuan, founder Liang Wenfeng reportedly put in about 20 billion yuan, Tencent about 10 billion and CATL about 5 billion, alongside JD.com, NetEase and China's national AI fund. Fortune's reporting adds that Tencent, JD.com and CATL accepted five-year lock-ups and no voting rights, while the national fund took voting rights and no lock-up.

Those terms say something about the strategic logic. Investors with no governance rights and a five-year hold are effectively buying exposure and alignment, not control. For Tencent, a platform company with its own AI products, The Next Web reports the deeper stake is a way to keep pace with domestic competitors. For CATL, a battery maker rather than a software company, the strategic rationale has not been stated in the reports reviewed here, so any explanation would be inference. What the pairing does show is breadth: a consumer-internet group, a heavy-industry leader and a state fund all sit on one cap table.

Investors with no governance rights and a five-year hold are buying alignment and exposure, not control.
Analysis of the reported lock-up terms

How it compares with Chinese peers

The three comparison points are very different in structure.

Zhipu listed in Hong Kong on January 8, 2026, raising HK$4.35 billion (about $558 million) and rising about 13% on its first day. Its retail tranche was reported as oversubscribed more than 1,159 times.
MiniMax listed on January 9, 2026, raising about HK$4.8 billion ($620 million). Its shares closed at HK$345 against an HK$165 offer price, up 109%, with a retail tranche about 1,836 times oversubscribed.
Moonshot AI has completed a round at a $50 billion valuation, up from $31.5 billion months earlier, and is preparing a Hong Kong IPO targeting Q1 2027 with proceeds of up to $5 billion, with Bank of America coordinating alongside CICC, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Its annual recurring revenue reportedly rose from $300 million in June to about $1 billion.

Against those, DeepSeek's private raise alone exceeds the IPO proceeds of Zhipu and MiniMax combined, and it is larger than Moonshot's planned offering. That reflects a different path: DeepSeek is raising a very large private round first and listing later, while its peers used the public market to raise their first large pools of capital. The valuation gap also matters. Moonshot at $50 billion sits below DeepSeek's reported $74 billion mark, though the two valuations were set at different times and on different terms.

Hong Kong versus Shanghai

The venue question shapes what investors can expect. Hong Kong gave Zhipu and MiniMax an international investor base and, in January, very strong retail demand. A STAR Market listing keeps DeepSeek's shareholders and regulator inside mainland China, which fits its profile as a national AI champion with a state fund on its register. The trade-off is a narrower pool of overseas buyers. The Yahoo Finance report on Moonshot also notes that both Moonshot and DeepSeek could face scrutiny from China's Cyberspace Administration over data practices, a reminder that a listing sits alongside regulatory review, not after it.

What to watch

The valuation. The reports verified for this article state a raise, not a post-money figure for the enlarged round.
A formal filing. A STAR Market application would settle the venue and reveal audited financials for the first time.
Peer pricing. Moonshot's Hong Kong offering, targeted for Q1 2027, will give the market a fresh read on how public investors price Chinese AI labs after the January listings.
The model cycle. Bloomberg ties the oversubscription to DeepSeek's latest model, so the next release may influence how the round is perceived.

For teams building on these models, the main point is that the Chinese open-weight labs are being capitalized for the long term. A model-agnostic workspace such as Metir AI lets a team use whichever lab's model fits a task, without tying its workflow to one funding story.

Sources:

Image credits

Header and in-body image: "Tencent Seafront Towers" by 钉钉 (User:钉钉), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Shows Tencent's Shenzhen headquarters, not a DeepSeek facility.