Behind DeepSeek’s $16 Billion Funding: Chinese Tech Titans and State Players
Jing Yang and Juro Osawa, citing round details from two people with direct knowledge, break down DeepSeek's second-ever funding round: 105.5 billion yuan ($15.8B) from nearly 30 investors at a 615.5 billion yuan valuation, China's largest AI venture raise to date. Chinese state-owned investors supplied 27% of this round (up from 2% in the April first round). Tencent and CATL remain the top two investors; new backers include ChangXin Memory and its chairman Zhu Yiming, SMIC, Vivo, Meituan, Midea, Luxshare, Geely, Ctrip and Xiaohongshu (1-3 billion yuan each). DeepSeek doubled the round mid-raise, mainly because black-market Nvidia Blackwell server prices rose (an eight-B300 server went from about 15M to 19M yuan), and to build a war chest in case the AI bubble bursts. Caveat: figures come from unnamed sources, not the company, and the article notes the state share 'could reinforce suspicions' rather than proving government direction.
Why it matters
A rare full cap-table view of China's most important AI lab: investor names, cheque sizes, valuation and round structure, all of which can go straight into Dealroom's DeepSeek profile and investor portfolios (Tencent, CATL, Monolith, IDG, Boyu, the National AI fund). It also quantifies how much China's AI champions now rely on state and corporate capital rather than VCs, useful context for any China vs US vs Europe AI funding comparison.
Executive takeaways
- Round: 105.5B yuan ($15.8B) from ~30 investors at a 615.5B yuan valuation; only DeepSeek's second round. Total raised ~136.5B yuan in about six months, plus 2B yuan more from founder Liang Wenfeng.
- Investor mix: state-owned investors 27% of this round (2% in round one); across both rounds tech companies 42%, state-backed 19%, VC/PE third.
- Top backers: Tencent and CATL remain the two biggest. State checks of 2-8B yuan from China Mobile, China Telecom, CICC, Citic Securities and China Life; National AI Development Fund another 1B yuan, invested directly.
- Strategic chip alliances: ChangXin Memory (and chairman Zhu Yiming) and SMIC joined, which fits the compute and memory shortage under US export controls.
- VC/PE: Monolith Management (Cao Xi, ex-Sequoia China) wrote the biggest checks; IDG Capital 6.5B yuan across two rounds; Boyu Capital 3.5B yuan in round two.
- Why it doubled: black-market B300 server prices rose from ~15M to ~19M yuan during the four-month raise, more than five times prices elsewhere, plus a rainy-day buffer as MiniMax and Z.ai shares have fallen since lock-ups expired.
- Governance: in round one, all investors except the National AI fund went through a Liang-owned entity, giving up voting rights with a five-year lock-up unless DeepSeek lists.
What The Information may be missing
The piece doesn't say whether round two kept the no-voting-rights, five-year lock-up structure, or give Liang's remaining ownership. There is no revenue, burn or compute-spend figure, so the valuation can't be benchmarked against OpenAI or Anthropic multiples. It also doesn't weigh how the 27% state share might affect DeepSeek's access to non-Chinese customers or app stores, and there is no comment from DeepSeek or the investors.
