Physix FrontierDeepSeek restarts second round of ¥50B funding, pre-money valuation surges to ¥500B
Financing Scale: RMB 50 billion | Pre-money Valuation: ~RMB 500 billion | Expected Signing: Late August
According to disclosures in early August by Caijing magazine and several other authoritative financial media outlets, DeepSeek officially resumed negotiations for its second round of RMB 50 billion financing on August 5. The pre-money valuation surged to RMB 500 billion, an increase of approximately 43% from the post-money valuation of RMB 350 billion in the first round.
Financing Timeline:
- Round 1 (Launched April 2026 → Full settlement June): RMB 50 billion, post-money valuation RMB 350 billion. Founder Liang Wenfeng personally contributed RMB 20 billion (40% share), led by the National AI Industry Investment Fund, with follow-on investments from Tencent (RMB 10 billion), CATL (RMB 5 billion), JD.com, NetEase, IDG Capital, etc.
- Round 2 (Preparation mid-July → Paused late July → Resumed Aug 5): Target RMB 50 billion, pre-money valuation RMB 500 billion. Currently in the intent communication stage; no funds have been received yet.
Use of Funds: Of the RMB 50 billion from Round 1, over 60% was invested in building self-owned domestic intelligent computing centers and infrastructure, 25% went to large model iterative R&D, and 15% was used for talent equity incentives and team expansion.
Strategic Intent:
- Accelerate Phase II expansion of the Ulanqab Intelligent Computing Center and tape-out of self-developed inference chips
- Prepare for STAR Market IPO (planned application submission end of 2026, listing in 2027)
- Respond to the increasingly fierce compute arms race
Signal Value: Two rounds totaling a hundred-billion-level financing, combined with imminent significant API price hikes, reflect that China's AI large model sector has fully transitioned from a "technology race" to a new phase of fighting on three fronts: "infrastructure + capital + commercialization."
Source: Caijing Magazine / Sina Finance / CCTV Finance, 2026-08-09
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