China's AI funding race just got bigger. Bloomberg reported on 6 October that DeepSeek is close to securing at least 80 billion yuan — roughly $12 billion — in its latest round, far above the roughly 50 billion yuan it had initially targeted. Several outlets now report the round could stretch to 100 billion yuan, or about $15 billion, which would make it one of the largest private raises ever by a Chinese AI company.

The backers underline how mainstream the bet has become. Tencent, already a partner through its music and streaming services, is among the largest investors, joined by battery giant CATL. The round is expected to be DeepSeek's second major external raise and is being framed as preparation for an IPO, with listings tentatively eyed for 2027. DeepSeek is not alone: Moonshot AI is also moving toward public markets, part of a broader wave of Chinese AI firms testing both private and public capital.

The scale matters for more than the balance sheet. Chinese labs have leaned on open-weight model releases and aggressive pricing to compete with US frontier developers, and a war chest of this size funds the compute and talent needed to keep iterating. It also lands as the global AI buildout is itself under scrutiny — the IMF warned this week that AI-driven investment is feeding inflation and financial-stability risk — and as memory and chip supply remain the industry's bottleneck.

For investors, the DeepSeek round is a test of whether Chinese AI champions can raise at valuations comparable to their US peers. For the wider market, it is another sign that the AI capital cycle, however contested, is still accelerating rather than cooling.

Sources