DeepSeek reportedly nears 100 billion yuan raise at about $70B valuation, double its first target

Caijing reported that DeepSeek is close to closing a second round of 100 billion yuan, roughly $14 billion, only four months after its 50 billion yuan first round in June. The target was doubled within about two weeks. Valuation is around 500 billion yuan, or about $70 billion. New investors include chip designer GigaDevice, foundry SMIC and Geely, alongside existing backers Tencent and CATL. The Information reportedly put annualized revenue above $1 billion, up from $500 million a few months earlier, even after DeepSeek raised API prices to two to four times prior levels in August. The money is earmarked for a data center in Inner Mongolia planned to run more than 160,000 Huawei Ascend chips, and the company hired a CFO on September 21 as it prepares for a possible STAR Market listing. For builders, the notable signal is pricing power. A lab known for the cheapest tokens raised prices and kept demand, which weakens the assumption that Chinese open models will keep undercutting on price. The Ascend buildout also shows a frontier-scale training stack forming outside Nvidia.