DeepSeek has reportedly raised approximately $15 billion — around 100 billion yuan — in one of the largest funding rounds ever seen in China, according to Bloomberg. The reported raise landed just two days after the U.S. government ordered federal civilian agencies to strip DeepSeek's AI technology from their systems over security concerns, a juxtaposition that captures the widening split between Washington's policy posture and the capital still flowing into Chinese AI.

A Funding Round at the Centre of the AI Race

The reported round is the latest signal of how aggressively investors are backing AI companies globally, China included. Potential participants named in the report include Chinese battery maker CATL and Tencent, the company behind WeChat, among others. Neither the terms nor the final investor list have been confirmed, and DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TechCrunch.

The figure follows a rapid succession of raises. DeepSeek closed an investment round in June, raising more than $7 billion at a $50 billion valuation. In July it was reportedly seeking a further $1.5 billion at a valuation of around $71 billion, alongside plans for a potential IPO in China as early as next year. If the $15 billion figure holds, it would represent a step change in scale even by the standards of the current AI funding cycle.

Why the Timing Matters

The U.S. order covering federal civilian agencies is the backdrop against which the raise is being read. For enterprise technology buyers, the sequence illustrates a growing divergence: procurement and security policy in the U.S. is moving to constrain Chinese AI providers, while private capital in China is accelerating its commitment to the same companies. DeepSeek's models have been widely adopted by developers precisely because they are open-weight and free to use, which makes them attractive for experimentation and self-hosted deployments — and harder to remove once embedded in workflows.

The Broader Chinese AI Funding Wave

DeepSeek is far from alone in attracting large cheques. Moonshot AI, the developer of Kimi, secured $2 billion at a $20 billion valuation in May. Manus AI raised more than $500 million earlier this month. Zhipu AI (Z.ai) and MiniMax, both of which went public in Hong Kong in January, carry market capitalizations of roughly $29 billion and $7.2 billion respectively. The concentration of capital suggests investors are betting on a small number of domestic champions capable of competing internationally, and that the competition among them is set to intensify.

Company Background and Ownership

DeepSeek was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, who previously co-founded Chinese quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer, which helped finance the company's early development. The lab gained global attention in early 2025 with its free-to-use, open-weight RI reasoning model, which challenged the dominance of U.S. AI companies and reset expectations about the cost of training capable models. According to corporate ownership data analyzed by WireScreen, Liang still retains an estimated 81.6% stake in DeepSeek's Chinese operating entity following the earlier funding round — a level of founder control that is unusual among heavily funded AI startups.

What Happens Next

The Hangzhou-based company is reportedly ramping up spending on AI infrastructure and open models aimed at both domestic and international markets. That spending plan is the clearest indication of where the money would go: compute, data centre capacity and continued model development. For developers and IT decision-makers, the practical questions are whether DeepSeek's open-weight releases continue at pace, how U.S. restrictions affect access to its hosted services, and whether a Chinese IPO materialises next year. The reported round remains unconfirmed, but its scale — and its timing against a U.S. security order — makes it one of the defining data points of the global AI funding race.