Thursday, August 27, 20261 min read← AI WIRE

DeepSeek Nears $7.4B Raise at $74B Valuation, Eyes Star Market Listing

DeepSeek is closing a 50 billion yuan funding round at a $74 billion pre-money valuation, marking its first external raise as it eyes a Shanghai Star…

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BY THE DEAL FLOW DESKBRIEFFundingUPDATEDSOURCED FROM 4 OUTLETS

DeepSeek is close to completing a funding round of approximately 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) at a pre-money valuation of about 500 billion yuan ($74 billion), according to people familiar with the matter¹. The round, which includes both existing and new investors, is expected to close before the end of August⁴. Proceeds will fund R&D and the company's expansion into computing infrastructure.

The raise marks the first time DeepSeek has opened up to external funding³. The Chinese AI lab had previously been financed entirely by High-Flyer Quant, the hedge fund co-founded by DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng. High-Flyer used AI and deep learning to trade stocks for years before supplying DeepSeek with early funding and computing power. As DeepSeek's capital requirements grow, the lab can no longer rely solely on the quant fund.

The company is moving closer to a potential listing on Shanghai's Star Market. The Wall Street Journal reported the funding development as a "welcome signal about the business model ahead of its possible IPO".

Meanwhile, Liang's quant empire has been active in China's hard-tech IPO market. Two High-Flyer affiliates, Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management and Ningbo High-Flyer Quantitative Investment Management, secured pre-IPO placements in CXMT, a memory chip maker, with a combined $26 million allocation, their largest this year. The same affiliates took a combined $5.8 million in shares of Unitree Robotics. DeepSeek itself participated in Unitree's offering as one of nine strategic investors, receiving 2.31% of the offering and agreeing to a 36-month lock-up period. Nearly half of the two High-Flyer affiliates' IPO allocations this year went to semiconductors and their supply chain.

High-Flyer's core trading business has faced headwinds: eight of its nine products recorded losses in July.

ANALYSIS The pivot to external capital, after years of self-funding through a single hedge fund, reflects the scale of compute investment DeepSeek now requires. The quant fund's concurrent bets on semiconductor and robotics IPOs place Liang's broader financial network at the intersection of China's AI hardware and software buildout.

Liang Wenfeng's stakes in DeepSeek made him the world's richest AI founder as of July.

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