Zeng Yuqun makes a heavy investment in Liang Wenfeng

We see the presence of CATL once again.

The new round of financing of DeepSeek is nearing completion, with a total amount of about 1 trillion RMB, setting a new record for a single round of financing in China's AI sector. Among the investors, CATL and Tencent have once again made large capital contributions and become the major investors.

Looking back at the previous two rounds of financing, CATL's involvement is somewhat unexpected. As early as the first half of this year, the CATL-related system invested 5 billion yuan to participate in DeepSeek's first round of financing. Now it has placed another big bet, sparking widespread speculation that the energy industry is making great strides into AI computing power.

Investors analyzed to us that CATL's move is not a pure financial investment, but a consideration for the coordinated layout of computing power and electricity. After all, "the end of AI is power". Standing at the center of the computing power storm, the connection between the two has never been so close.

Zeng Yuqun Made Consecutive Moves

Heavy Position in DeepSeek

This is the largest financing in the history of China's venture capital.

Bloomberg disclosed more details: DeepSeek raised about 1 trillion RMB in the latest round of financing, and has raised the financing target for many times during the period. CATL and Tencent are the major investors of this round.

So far, DeepSeek has obtained the largest single round of financing in China's AI sector, with a total accumulated financing amount exceeding 1.5 trillion yuan in the past six months.

Among them, CATL's two heavy bets are very impressive.

People close to the transaction previously shared the line-up of DeepSeek's first round of financing, including founder Liang Wenfeng, Tencent, NetEase, JD, CATL system, Zhenxin Fund, Shixiang Technology, Monolith Capital and IDG Capital, etc.

In the overall financing scale of about 510 billion yuan, founder Liang Wenfeng and Tencent rank the first and second largest contributors respectively, followed by the CATL system (including CATL and Puquan Capital).

There were already early signs of this.

In April this year, the relevant person in charge of CATL stated at the first quarterly report performance interpretation meeting that the popularization speed of artificial intelligence is very fast, and the key bottleneck of computing power is energy. The energy storage demand of data centers will have great development in the future. "CATL is exploring solutions for data centers from the perspective of energy supply."

"Every Token consumes energy." Zeng Yuqun also said in an interview that he hopes to make some contributions to the energy solutions of AIDC (AI-driven data centers). At that time, JPMorgan Chase analyzed in a research report that CATL is building a vertically integrated AIDC energy storage ecosystem, transforming from a pure battery supplier to "an energy infrastructure partner for AI computing power construction".

Now, all the clues are connected.

Hidden Layout of Giants

In the first impression of the outside world, CATL and DeepSeek do not have much business overlap, but in fact there are hidden mysteries.

The reason is that the instantaneous power consumption fluctuation of large intelligent computing centers is very large, which not only requires a stable high-voltage DC power supply system, but also supporting energy storage to cope with the fluctuation of wind and solar power generation and the peak-valley difference of the power grid, and at the same time act as the backup power supply for the computer room. CATL has long-standing accumulation in this field.

The annual power consumption of an ultra-large-scale data center can reach hundreds of millions of kWh, and the corresponding energy storage demand is inestimable. In other words, investing in DeepSeek means locking in potential big customers.

An investor who has long tracked the AI industry pointed out that CATL's investment in DeepSeek is not mainly for financial returns, but for the consideration of strategic layout. "Its business focus that has begun to shift more than a year ago has expanded from new energy vehicles and energy storage to AIDC, and the AIDC business is the core of future growth."

CATL was initially labeled as a power battery giant, and then expanded rapidly along the direction of energy storage. In 2018, its energy storage business revenue was only 189 million yuan. By 2025, this figure has increased to 62.44 billion yuan, with a global market share of 30.4%, ranking first for five consecutive years. In the first half of this year, it further reached 53.261 billion yuan.

However, with second- and third-tier battery suppliers catching up continuously and gross profit margin under pressure, the ceiling of the industry has gradually emerged. If it can build the energy base of AI computing power infrastructure, it will naturally open up new growth space.

In fact, following the clue of coordination between computing power and electricity, CATL has made a number of related investments this year:

In April this year, CATL planned to contribute about 4.1 billion yuan to acquire 49% equity of Zhongheng Technology, the controlling shareholder of Zhongheng Electric. A month later, its related party spent about 942 million US dollars (about 6.4 billion yuan) to acquire about 38.1% of the shares of 21Vianet, becoming its largest shareholder, and completed the delivery in September.

Zhongheng Electric has deep accumulation in the field of high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power supply for intelligent computing centers, while 21Vianet is China's first US-listed IDC company, owning one of the largest carrier-neutral data center networks in China. Coupled with DeepSeek, the investment chain is clearly visible.

It should be noted that DeepSeek has been investing in and building AI data centers for a long time. Previously, it released a recruitment notice, recruiting a group of talents majoring in electrical engineering, HVAC, automation, energy, civil engineering and other majors. The positions belong to the IDC data center, covering infrastructure operation, planning and design and on-site directions, with work locations based in Beijing, Hangzhou and Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia.

"Every generation will encounter their own infrastructure revolution. In the past, it was railways, power grids and the Internet. Today, it is the ultra-large-scale computing power cluster that supports the development of AI." The recruitment copy introduced the team's mission at that time.

After sorting out, from hardware support to customer landing, CATL has gradually obtained the admission ticket for AI computing power energy supply. "Investing in DeepSeek is a move of CATL's coordinated layout of computing power and electricity, aiming to open up the complete closed loop of 'green power - energy storage - power distribution - computing power'."

This is the most magnificent moment in the technological revolution, and no one wants to turn around before reaching the final destination.

This article is from the WeChat official account "PEdaily" (ID: pedaily2012), the author is Yu Mengying, and it is released with authorization from 36Kr.