By Timeline Timelines, Author | Wang Zhi, Editor | Zhou Yi
DeepSeek's first round of financing has welcomed its latest development.
On June 16, according to the latest news released by foreign media The Information, DeepSeek has completed financing exceeding 50 billion RMB. With this round of financing, DeepSeek's valuation has surpassed 50 billion USD.
It needs to be clarified that, up to this point, the above report content from foreign media has not been officially confirmed by DeepSeek and the related investors. However, judging from the current dynamics overall, DeepSeek's this round of financing is already nearing a final settlement.
DeepSeek initiated this round of financing in April 2026, and up to now, it has lasted for two months—this is also the first time DeepSeek has opened up for external financing since its establishment. For a long period before this, ever since DeepSeek was founded, DeepSeek has consistently adhered to principles such as "no financing, no listing, no commercialization."
Precisely based on this background, DeepSeek's this round of financing has attracted considerable attention both in the domestic AI field and the global AI market—amidst a large number of investors wanting to get involved, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng set an extremely high investment threshold for this round of financing, which also added to the highlights of this financing event.
Below are the 7 key questions most worthy of attention in this financing round.
1. What is the overall situation of DeepSeek's current financing round?
According to foreign media reports, DeepSeek's current financing round exceeds 50 billion yuan. Liang Wenfeng personally invested 20 billion RMB, and other investors include Tencent, CATL, JD.com, NetEase, IDG Capital, etc.
With the completion of this financing round, DeepSeek's valuation has already broken through 50 billion USD.
It is worth noting that DeepSeek first officially launched this round of financing in April 2026, with an estimated valuation of about 10 billion USD at that time. However, over the following two months, DeepSeek's valuation has multiplied several times, making this financing round the largest-scale one in the domestic large model field.
2. What are the special aspects of this financing round?
In the specific operation, DeepSeek adopted a special method in this round of financing.
According to foreign media reports, in this financing round, most investors need to inject their funds into a limited partnership enterprise controlled by DeepSeek CEO Liang Wenfeng, rather than directly investing in DeepSeek the company itself—simultaneously, these investors are subject to a 5-year lock-up period.
Under this structure, these investors do not enjoy voting rights in DeepSeek but can obtain prioritized financial information and possess priority investment rights for potential subsequent financing rounds.
Meanwhile, according to foreign media reports, the sole exception among the numerous investors is the National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund. This fund can directly invest in DeepSeek, with an investment amount of 1 billion yuan. It holds company voting rights and is not bound by a lock-up period.
3. Why is there such a financing arrangement?
From the current situation, the core reason for adopting this special arrangement is still to ensure Liang Wenfeng's absolute control over DeepSeek.
After all, judging from much past information, Liang Wenfeng carries a strong label of technical idealism. His original intention in founding DeepSeek was to achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and make it benefit ordinary people.
According to media reports, previously in meetings with investors, Liang Wenfeng clearly stated that the company would continue to promote open-source AI models and aim for the realization of AGI; DeepSeek's current primary task is to continuously expand the technological frontier, meaning prioritizing groundbreaking artificial intelligence research over achieving profitability and short-term commercialization.
Beyond this original intention, Liang Wenfeng set strict requirements for this financing round, establishing a 5-year equity lock-up period, also to ensure that participants are patient capital with strategic resolve, not pursuing short-term cashing out.
4. In this financing round, why was Tencent able to participate?
For Tencent, investing in DeepSeek itself is an investment action that far transcends the financial level; this is clearly a strategic investment.
From Tencent's perspective, it itself was one of the earliest adopters of DeepSeek. When DeepSeek became a hit in February 2025, Tencent was also among the first to add support for DeepSeek in its Yuanbao App. There is a very deep business synergy relationship between the two.
With the emergence of this financing round, this business synergy relationship has a great chance to continue in the subsequent development of both parties' artificial intelligence businesses.
From another perspective, Tencent's ability to participate is also related to Tencent's own long-term investment style. In its long-term investment practice, Tencent often adopts an attitude of providing multi-faceted assistance but not actively intervening in the invested enterprises, and overall is also very patient, which might be a key factor in Tencent's ability to participate.
5. What is the core logic behind CATL's investment in DeepSeek?
For DeepSeek, in the process of advancing AI's iteration towards AGI, large-scale training computing power is undoubtedly a crucial technical support point. In the physical world, computing power is mainly supported through data centers (especially power-intensive AI data centers).
And data centers are precisely a major strategic and business intersection point for DeepSeek and CATL.
Among these, the energy storage business segment related to AI data centers is exactly the area that CATL is currently focusing on and is also where CATL's new business growth curve lies.
It is worth mentioning that, previously in a public interview discussing AI, CATL Chairman Zeng Yuqun stated:
In the AI field, we regard AI as a whole as a tool, rather than saying we want to compete with AI companies in the AI field. But AI uses energy. In the end, your AIDC (Artificial Intelligence Data Center), your Token is energy.
Thus, Zeng Yuqun emphasized that CATL hopes to make some contributions in the energy solutions for AIDC—this is also a core intersection point for CATL's participation in DeepSeek's current financing round.
6. Regarding this financing round, what does the participation of the "national team" signify?
In DeepSeek's this round of financing, the participation of the "national team" is a very noteworthy observation point.
Previously in May, according to a report by the Financial Times, the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund was negotiating with DeepSeek to lead its first round of financing. However, in the latest report by The Information on June 16, the investment entity representing the "national team" was the National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund.
Therefore, the specific manner in which the "national team" participates still appears elusive.
But it can be confirmed that, in the current environment, for a company like DeepSeek, its competitiveness in the AI field has transcended the scope of technology itself. Moreover, from the perspective of computing power adaptation, eight domestic AI chip manufacturers including Huawei Ascend, Cambricon, Moore Threads, etc., have all completed full adaptation for DeepSeek-V4.
It is worth mentioning that, according to a knowledgeable source, there is a special clause in this financing round. The Liang Wenfeng team requires verification of the real identities of the limited partners behind all contributing funds, to avoid the risk of equity ultimately flowing into unknown entities—the logic behind this is self-evident.
7. After the completion of this financing round, how will DeepSeek develop next?
On one hand, from a product dimension, DeepSeek has the opportunity to subsequently launch new model versions, provide more tools for enterprise users, support industry-common MCP protocols, including adding support for images and audio. To some extent, this is also to better move towards commercialization.
On the other hand, DeepSeek will naturally increase its investment efforts in infrastructure, talent recruitment, model training, and other aspects. Among these, from the latest public dynamics, DeepSeek has already initiated talent recruitment plans (with not low salary levels) for its Inner Mongolia data center, which is sufficient to indicate that DeepSeek's goal of building its own data center has begun to materialize.
In the long run, DeepSeek's goal is to achieve AGI. This is a long journey that still requires massive inputs of funds, talent, etc. Moreover, for Liang Wenfeng, how to simultaneously handle the expectations of relevant capital parties regarding DeepSeek's commercialization and reasonable returns, while maintaining its technological realization and inclusive original intention, will be a proposition that Liang Wenfeng will inevitably face.
In a sense, DeepSeek's first round of financing is merely the beginning of this journey.
