According to Caijing, DeepSeek, the leading domestic AI large model company, has officially restarted its second round of financing, planning to raise 50 billion yuan. The pre-investment valuation has reached about 500 billion yuan, and it is expected to complete the signing in late August. If this round is successfully closed, the total fundraising amount of DeepSeek in two rounds will exceed 100 billion yuan, with the valuation increasing by about 43% compared to the first round, further setting a new record for financing in the domestic AI field.
Looking back at its capital path, DeepSeek's first round of financing started in April this year and was completed in June, raising 50 billion yuan at a valuation of over 350 billion yuan, setting a new record for the largest first-round financing in domestic AI large model companies. This round attracted participation from state-owned enterprises, industrial giants, and top institutions such as the National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, Tencent, CATL, NetEase, JD.com, and IDG Capital, with the intended funding scale once exceeding 100 billion yuan. Due to the limit of the first round, many backup investors moved on to the second round.
Although the second round of financing was initially launched in mid-July and briefly paused at the end of July, after restarting, DeepSeek and the investors have been proceeding more discreetly, with some early contacted institutions not yet receiving notice of the restart. In the current context of rapid development in AI large model research and intensified competition in computing power, the investment of hundreds of billions of yuan not only demonstrates the strong support of top-tier capital for the technological iteration and commercialization potential of leading domestic large models, but also will have a profound impact on industry differentiation and the construction of high computing power barriers.
