DeepSeek Reportedly Raises $15B With Tencent and CATL Backing

DeepSeek has raised about 100 billion yuan, or roughly $15 billion, in a round whose biggest backers include Tencent and battery maker CATL, according to a Bloomberg report picked up by TechCrunch. The reporting lands two days after the US ordered federal civilian agencies to remove the Hangzhou lab's AI technology from their systems over security concerns.

The round itself kept growing. The company "boosted its financing target at least twice as it talked with investors, from 50 billion yuan to 80 billion yuan before reaching the final tally," Bloomberg reported, calling the deal "one of the country's largest ever."

Bloomberg frames the raise as "a sign of the startup's ambitions to compete globally with the likes of Anthropic PBC and OpenAI," and says DeepSeek has increased spending on "data centres and open-source models as it prepares for a potential initial public offering." DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a TechCrunch request for comment.

On one side of the Pacific, Washington is pulling DeepSeek code out of federal systems. On the other, a Chinese battery giant and the country's biggest social-platform operator are writing checks big enough to make this one of China's largest-ever private AI rounds. Our DeepSeek tracker has logged the countervailing move from Beijing this week, with MOFCOM threatening "all necessary measures" over the procurement ban.