DeepSeek has resumed its second funding round, seeking close to $8 billion at a valuation near 500 billion yuan (~$74 billion), according to Bloomberg News — weeks after the Hangzhou-based AI lab suspended the round. Monolith Management, a backer of rival Moonshot AI, is in talks to participate, people familiar with the matter said.
Parallel to the fundraising, DeepSeek plans a "significant" price increase across its AI services, Bloomberg reported — an unusual shift for the company whose low-cost models upended the industry. The company, which currently charges $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.28 per million output tokens, did not specify the exact increases. Reuters had reported in July that DeepSeek was planning a fresh round at about 500 billion yuan ahead of a potential mainland initial public offering.
Taken together, the moves suggest DeepSeek is preparing for a new phase: monetizing its runaway popularity while locking in capital at a valuation that has climbed from the tens of billions discussed in earlier talks to roughly $74 billion.
