A coalition of industrial giants including SMIC and Geely has invested in the Hangzhou-based startup to support its bid for global AI dominance. The company raised approximately $15B (100 billion yuan) in its latest financing round, which assigned DeepSeek a pre-money valuation of about $74.8B, according to Bloomberg and Chinese media. This capital raise was led by Tencent and battery maker CATL, with the latter contributing about $1.5B to double its stake. Other participants included IT provider Lenovo, Stony Creek Capital, and Legend Capital.
