On October 26, Beijing time, news broke that DeepSeek had successfully closed a substantial new round of financing, with the transaction amount soaring to 106.1 billion yuan and its post-investment valuation surpassing 600 billion yuan.

Back in June, DeepSeek had just wrapped up its inaugural round of financing, which exceeded 50 billion yuan. Just a little over four months later, DeepSeek has achieved another milestone by completing its second round of financing, amounting to 106.1 billion yuan. In this remarkably brief span of roughly 130 days, DeepSeek has managed to raise an impressive total of over 150 billion yuan.

The speed and magnitude of this financing are unparalleled in the annals of Chinese venture capital. Whether there will be others to follow in its footsteps remains to be seen over time. Even if another round of financing surpasses 100 billion yuan, DeepSeek is likely to be the one to break its own record again.

It is reported that over 20 investment institutions took part in DeepSeek's second round of financing:

Among the new investors are industrial capital players such as Shixi Capital, a subsidiary of GigaDevice in the chip sector; SMIC Capital from the SMIC group; InnoLight, the leader in optical modules; China Mobile and China Telecom, both telecommunications operators; Legend Capital from the Lenovo group; Geely Capital from the automotive sector; and Hengdian Capital from the film and television industry. Additionally, financial investors such as Boyu Capital, CPE Source Peak, Banyan Capital, CITIC Investment, and Meituan Dragonball also joined the fray.

Existing shareholders, including Tencent, CATL, IDG Capital, Monolith Capital, and Guozhitou, continued to show their confidence by investing further.

Tencent and CATL were previously identified as the lead investors in this round, with CATL investing over 10 billion yuan. CATL had already invested 5 billion yuan in the first round, bringing its total investment over the two rounds to an impressive 15 billion yuan.

CATL's primary objective is to secure cooperation in providing power supply solutions for the data centers being constructed by DeepSeek. Energy storage is currently CATL's fastest-growing business segment, and AIDC energy storage represents a market that CATL is keen to dominate.

As for Tencent, given its dominance over social media entry points and its ongoing development of its own large-scale models, it has little choice but to pursue significant external investments. Tencent has previously invested in companies such as Yuezhi Anmian, Zhipu AI, MiniMax, Baichuan Intelligence, Jieyue Xingchen, and Manus, effectively covering the AI large model and application sectors. However, Tencent's track record of using investments to bolster its own weaknesses has already been demonstrated with companies like JD.com and Meituan, and this time it's DeepSeek's turn!