Chinese AI company DeepSeek is planning to raise at least 10 billion yuan in a follow-on funding round at a pre-money valuation of approximately $71 billion. This comes just weeks after closing its first-ever external raise of $7.4 billion (over 50 billion yuan), which valued the company between $52 billion and $59 billion post-money, making it China’s most valuable AI laboratory. The initial round attracted major investors including Tencent (approximately 10 billion yuan), CATL (around 5 billion yuan), and founder Liang Wenfeng himself (about 20 billion yuan), structured through a limited partnership granting investors zero voting rights, no direct equity stake, and a five-year lock-up period. The new capital will fund compute expansion, data center capacity, and talent recruitment.
Source: Read the original article
