Report: DeepSeek Resumes Financing, Pre-money Valuation at 500 Billion Yuan
Several transaction sources revealed to Caijing that AI company DeepSeek has restarted its second round of financing, aiming to raise 50 billion yuan with a pre-money valuation of approximately 500 billion yuan. The signing is planned for late August.
DeepSeek completed its first funding round of 50 billion yuan in June with a valuation over 350 billion yuan, marking the largest first-round financing in China's AI large model history. The second round was reportedly paused in late July, partly due to the founder's dissatisfaction with leaked investor meeting details circulating online. It has since been restarted with a desire for a more discreet process.
The second-round valuation represents a 43% increase from the first round. If successful, DeepSeek will have raised over 100 billion yuan across both rounds. Investor interest remains high; the first round saw over 100 billion yuan in expressed intent, leaving significant unmet demand.
DeepSeek's fundraising scale surpasses competitors like Moonshot AI, which recently raised funds at a $31.5 billion valuation and is planning a Pre-IPO round. Market pricing for these model companies is seen more as an "option" on reaching AGI rather than based on traditional financial metrics.
Regarding model development, DeepSeek recently publicly tested the DeepSeek-V4-Flash official version in late July, featuring enhanced Agent capabilities and strong performance on benchmarks. It follows a high-value, low-cost strategy, with its pricing being competitive against rivals like Zhipu GLM-5.2 and OpenAI's GPT-4o. On the OpenRouter platform, DeepSeek-V4-Flash recently ranked first in weekly token consumption. The company faces pressure in training new models, and the release timeline for the V4-Pro official version remains unannounced.
marsbitВчора 02:56
