Deepseek closes $12b funding with CATL and Tencent, eyes 2027 IPO
deepseek raises $12 billion in funding round led by catl and tencent for its ai models, aiming for a 2027 ipo.
deepseek, a chinese ai startup, is close to raising at least $12 billion in a new funding round, with battery maker catl and tencent contributing the largest shares. the company originally aimed to raise $7.5 billion but saw strong investor interest due to its v4-flash model, which has set new benchmarks against anthropic and openai. deepseek plans to restructure for an ipo in early 2027 and is building a data center with at least 160,000 ai chips from huawei.