DeepSeek plans $74B valuation fundraising and IPO

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is planning a new fundraising round at a valuation of about 500 billion yuan ($74 billion) just weeks after its first external financing in June 2025, which valued the company at 450 billion yuan. The company aims to raise up to 50 billion yuan and has begun early preparations for an IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market, with an internal target to file this year. The back-to-back fundraising highlights strong investor demand and the rising costs of competing in AI, including computing power, data center capacity, and talent. DeepSeek is also developing its own AI inference chip and plans to double its workforce. The company faces competition from ByteDance, Alibaba, and other AI startups. Key investors in the June round included founder Liang Wenfeng (20 billion yuan), Tencent (10 billion yuan), CATL (5 billion yuan), and others. The participation of China's national AI fund underscores DeepSeek's strategic importance to Beijing's ambitions for domestic AI champions.