DeepSeek reportedly in talks to raise $1.5B, then IPO

DeepSeek, the Chinese large language model developer, is preparing for a 2027 IPO debut, but it could come as early as the end of this year as it also looks to raise around $1.5 billion in new funds at about a $71 billion valuation, Bloomberg reports.

The news comes after the company raised $7 billion in funds just a month ago at around a $50 billion valuation in its first-ever outside funding round.

Company Background

The China-based startup, founded in 2023, made headlines early last year after releasing AI technology that was both more efficient and more cost-effective than U.S. model makers. It has since grown exponentially in popularity.

Market Performance

In June, it accounted for nearly 23% of all the tens of trillions of tokens processed by enterprise-focused AI gateway Vercel, the company reports. This is compared to Anthropic taking 32% of tokens.

DeepSeek continues to show how Chinese open-source models perform within a few breaths of top U.S. AI Labs, despite U.S. export controls on chips. DeepSeek’s cloud service runs on chips made by the Chinese company Huawei Technologies.

Investors

Investors in DeepSeek include Tencent and Beijing’s National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, per Bloomberg.