DeepSeek raises about $15 billion (Rs 4.15 trillion) as CATL and Tencent lead its new funding round

Chinese AI company DeepSeek is wrapping up a funding round worth about 100 billion yuan ($14.98 billion), two people with knowledge of the deal told Reuters on Thursday. At today's interbank rate that is roughly Rs 4.15 trillion. Bloomberg was first to report the $15 billion figure.

Who is paying

• CATL, the world's biggest maker of electric-car batteries, and Tencent, the company behind WeChat, are among the largest investors, one of the sources said.
• The round should close in the coming days, but the terms could still change.
• DeepSeek had aimed for 50 billion yuan, so it has raised about twice what it set out to.

Many of the investors are backed by the Chinese state or large corporations, Reuters noted, as Beijing tries to keep pace with the United States in AI.

Next step: a listing

In September Reuters reported that DeepSeek had hired CITIC Securities to prepare a possible listing on Shanghai's STAR Market, the board for technology companies. A round this size is usually the last big private raise before a company goes public.

Why readers in Pakistan should care

DeepSeek's models are among the cheapest strong AI tools a Pakistani developer, freelancer or startup can use, and its open-weight releases can be run on local servers, which matters to companies worried about sending data abroad. This month it released an updated DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, a cheaper coding model with a search API (our report). Fresh money means the price war with OpenAI, Google and Anthropic is likely to continue, which usually means lower API bills.

There is a catch. On 20 October the US barred its civilian government agencies from using DeepSeek and tools built on it (details here). Pakistani software houses that build for American government clients should check their contracts before putting DeepSeek inside a product.

Quick numbers

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