Catenaa, Tuesday, October 06, 2026- Chinese AI firm DeepSeek is seeking to secure $12 billion in its latest funding round, backed by Tencent and CATL.
Citing sources, Bloomberg News said DeepSeek initially sought about $7.4 billion, but after the successful release of its latest AI model, investor demand was much higher than expected, and the funding rose upto $12 billion.
Based on term sheets signed, sources told Bloomberg that the final tally could approach $14.9 billion.
Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd(CALT) and Tencent Holdings were the top funders in the current financing round, the report said.
Bloomberg report said that DeepSeek plans to deploy at least 160,000 of Huawei’s top accelerators at a massive data center it’s building in Inner Mongolia, which may create one of the largest known clusters of Huawei AI chips.
Therefore, the report said that DeepSeek requires huge amounts of capital to bankroll its ambitions in a potentially revolutionary technology.
DeepSeek’s latest funding round sets the stage for China’s most anticipated market debuts in years.
Bloomberg News said that DeepSeek has gained investor interest after the release of the V4 Flash model, which provided a solution for the cost-versus-performance challenge against leaders Anthropic and OpenAI.
That caps a strong run for founder Liang Wenfeng, whose startup has forged a reputation for technical breakthroughs since a 2025 model that matched the capabilities of Silicon Valley offerings at a fraction of the cost.
Bloomberg News previously reported that DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng pledged in at least one meeting with investors this year that he will keep developing open AI models while pursuing a broader goal of achieving artificial general intelligence.
Wenfeng made it clear his main goal was to push the boundaries of the technology rather than monetization, the previous report by Bloomberg said.
“While discussions around the current deal are nearing an end, details may still change in final talks, ” sources told Bloomberg. DeepSeek had originally targeted a valuation of about $74.6 billion in its financing.
Sources also told Bloomberg that DeepSeek has drawn enormous interest from would-be investors because it’s one of a clutch of companies that sit at the heart of China’s effort to compete globally on AI. Once the round closes, the next step should be to restructure the company to prepare for an IPO.
Liang’s net worth has increased by over 200% to around $36 billion since DeepSeek closed its first round of external fundraising this summer.
