DeepSeek closes $15B funding round days after US federal ban on its tech

✅ Verified Oct 22, 2026

DeepSeek wrapped up a roughly $15 billion fundraising round, one of China's largest ever, two days after US federal agencies were ordered to remove its AI technology.

#What happened

Bloomberg first reported Thursday that DeepSeek has wrapped up a fundraising round of about 100 billion yuan ($15 billion), roughly doubling its original 50-billion-yuan target, with CATL and Tencent among the biggest investors and more than 15 investors in total, per Reuters. The round closed just two days after the US ordered federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek's AI technology from their systems over security concerns. It follows DeepSeek's June round of more than $7 billion at a $50 billion valuation, and a reported July effort to raise another $1.5 billion at around $71 billion ahead of a potential China IPO next year.

#Why it matters

One of China's biggest-ever funding rounds gives DeepSeek fresh firepower for AI infrastructure and open models even as it faces US restrictions, narrowing the resource gap with US frontier labs that have each raised over $100 billion.