DeepSeek's hundred-billion-yuan financing is nearing completion: it has forged alliances with industrial capitals including Perfect World and SMIC PES Capital, doubling the raised funds to place big bets on embodied intelligence.
Barely less than four months have passed since DeepSeek closed its industry-record RMB 51 billion first-round financing, the leading large model enterprise is nearing the closing stage of its second super-sized financing round.
According to Bloomberg's latest report today (October 22), the size of DeepSeek's current financing round has been locked at around RMB 1000 billion, with the pre-money valuation remaining at approximately RMB 5000 billion. Sources familiar with the matter revealed that the transaction underwent drastic dynamic adjustments during the promotion process: the initial planned fundraising amount was RMB 500 billion, then under the competition of industrial capital from all parties and existing shareholders, the target was raised twice, and the final financing amount directly doubled to the hundred-billion-yuan level.
In terms of the capital allocation, the capital contribution of new and existing shareholders shows a 50-50 split. Existing shareholders Tencent and CATL each increased their capital contribution by about RMB 100 billion, becoming the cornerstone investors of this round; while the new entrants are all from the hard technology camp, including Stony Creek Capital, SMIC PE, CPE Yuanfeng, Legend Capital as well as automotive giant Geely, etc.
If the 100-billion-yuan scale of this round is added to the RMB 51 billion first-round financing finalized by Liang Wenfeng and core institutions at the end of June, DeepSeek has cumulatively absorbed more than RMB 1500 billion of capital in just over 100 days, setting a brand new record for capital throughput speed in the global artificial intelligence field.
External liquidity accelerates entry
Echoing the foreign media reports is the intensive movements on the capital channel side of the A-share market.
Recently, Perfect World (002624.SZ) has intensively disclosed announcements on investment progress, announcing that two key external special funds have been fully raised: the scale of the "Tianjin Lisi Xingshen" fund reaches 75.20 billion yuan, and the scale of the "Shixiang Shangshi" fund reaches 36.50 billion yuan. The two funds have absorbed a total of 111.70 billion yuan of external funds.
Behind these two large special funds, the figures of many A-share listed companies have emerged. Perfect World subscribed 50 million yuan and 100 million yuan respectively, completing dual-channel bets with a total capital contribution of 150 million yuan; Century Huatong subscribed 650 million yuan of Shixiang Shangshi through its wholly-owned subsidiary; computing power service provider Litong Electronics also previously announced a capital contribution of 95 million yuan to subscribe for the shares of Lisi Xingshen.
At the same time, the public information from the Asset Management Association of China shows that Lisi Xingshen has completed the private equity investment fund registration on September 15, 2026, with the registration code SEX397. According to insiders, both Lisi Xingshen and Shixiang Shangshi are the external asset management channels for DeepSeek's current financing. As the relevant funds have successively completed the actual payment and account closing, the channels for external social capital to inject into DeepSeek's core asset pool have been basically locked.
The reason why "Lisi Capital (Lisi Series Capital)" is worthy of key attention is that it has become the core channel for external SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) to heavily invest in DeepSeek in DeepSeek's last round of financing.
This hard technology investment institution founded by former HSG partner Cao Xi and former Boyu Capital partner Tim Wang in 2021, its investment covers AI large models, domestic GPUs, robotics and AI infrastructure, etc. Moonshot AI, DeepSeek, Unitree Robotics and other enterprises are all in its investment portfolio.
In May this year, Lisi Capital initiated the establishment of the 2.9 billion yuan scale "Tianjin Lisi Xingshen" fund, then subscribed for the partnership shares of the holding carrier "Hangzhou Chengli", and finally indirectly holds about 0.8265% of the equity of DeepSeek through penetration. Now, the newly established "Lisi Xingshen" has surged to 75.20 billion yuan, with its size nearly tripled, which once again confirms its mature operation as a super channel connecting the liquidity of secondary market listed companies and top-tier AI assets.
More critical capitalization signals are also emerging simultaneously. Citing sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg pointed out that while promoting this round of 100-billion-yuan level financing, DeepSeek is simultaneously preparing for its STAR Market IPO, planning to submit the listing application as soon as the end of this year, and striving to be officially listed in 2027. Yan Wentao, former partner of GL Ventures, has taken the new position as CFO, which has completed the professional operator for this capital operation involving 100-billion-yuan capital allocation and multi-layer penetration supervision.
Allying game, computing power and chip industrial capital
The entry of Perfect World, Century Huatong and Litong Electronics has made the industrial synergy feature of DeepSeek's current financing more concrete. The two game leading enterprises Perfect World and Century Huatong have subscribed a total of 800 million yuan to the relevant special funds, and the computing power service provider Litong Electronics has subscribed 95 million yuan. The three listed companies have different businesses, but they clearly focus on the core links such as next-generation game content generation and computing power infrastructure.
In August this year, DeepSeek once launched a high-paying recruitment in the fields of game development and 3D rendering, which attracted widespread attention in the game industry. The positions include: Code Agent Data Engineer (game development direction), Web 3D and rendering direction, requiring candidates "do not need to be proficient in model training, but must have actually developed games", focusing on game developers' engineering methods, complex interactions and years of accumulated industry R&D experience.
From the broader list of investors, the participation of semiconductor industrial capitals such as Stony Creek Capital and SMIC PE has injected a deep hard tech background into this round of financing. Previously, DeepSeek's architecture optimization under limited computing power conditions has been widely recognized by the industry, especially the close cooperation and adaptation optimization around domestic computing power such as Huawei Ascend.
With the entry of core semiconductor capitals including SMIC system, its future actions in the underlying adaptation of domestic chips and the construction of customized computing power clusters, even self-developed chips are worthy of continuous tracking.
Overall, DeepSeek's capital sources are further expanding horizontally from the original large Internet manufacturers and pure financial investment institutions to a wide range of real industry camps such as semiconductor manufacturing, automotive industry and energy hardware.
Embodied intelligence becomes a new variable
In addition to the changes in the investor structure, the recent intensive layout of embodied intelligence by founder Liang Wenfeng has also revealed a new strategic direction for this super financing round.
Previously, multiple media reports said that Liang Wenfeng has recently exchanged views with a number of embodied intelligence entrepreneurs, discussing directions such as robots, large models and real-world interaction. Sources familiar with the matter revealed that DeepSeek is considering whether to further enter this field, and possible paths include self-built team for R&D, or cutting in by investing in related enterprises.
In terms of investment, DeepSeek has already bet on three embodied intelligence enterprises.
Unitree Robotics (disclosed): DeepSeek has previously invested about RMB 141 million to take shares in this enterprise, cutting into robot hardware, motion control and general development and testing resources. The two parties also plan to jointly develop robot AI models, and Unitree will provide the cooperation basis in ontology and motion control for DeepSeek to explore robot applications.
Winverse AI (planned lead investor): Founded by Hu Han, former Tencent AI scientist, DeepSeek plans to lead its seed round financing (the amount reaches tens of millions of US dollars), with a post-investment valuation of about 400 million US dollars. Meituan's subsidiary Dragon Ball Investment is also among the participants.
The startup company of Yu Tao (name/entity to be disclosed): The new company of Yu Tao, former member of Tencent AI Lab Juewu team and head of the humanoid robot basic model of Driven Dynamics, whose direction is the combination of large language model (LLM) and embodied intelligence. The valuations of its two rounds are about 70 million US dollars and 200 million US dollars respectively. Recently, some media reported that it has obtained investment participated by DeepSeek and first-tier funds.
Embodied intelligence involves real-world data interaction, multi-physical field simulation and high-precision motion control, which has extremely high continuous consumption of computing power resources, engineering test environment and hardware ontology.
To some extent, this explains why the scale of DeepSeek's current financing has been greatly raised to the 100-billion-yuan level in a short period of time, and also reveals its strategic ambition: from the model deduction of cloud virtual code, it officially expands its boundary to real intelligent entities with physical interaction capabilities.
This article is from WeChat Official Account "AI Front" (ID: ai-front), Author: Siyue, published with authorization from 36Kr.