DeepSeek goes public: The Chinese AI startup hired a bank and wants a valuation of 75 billion dollars

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which just under two years ago shook up the whole global AI market with a cheap yet powerful model, is now taking another big step. According to Reuters, it has hired the investment bank CITIC Securities to prepare its IPO. If the plan works out, it will be the first major Chinese AI startup that will have to regularly disclose its financials to the public.

Target: Shanghai Stock Exchange; application this year

DeepSeek is heading for the STAR Market in Shanghai. It’s a technology-focused segment of the Chinese stock exchange—China’s equivalent of the American Nasdaq for tech companies. According to sources cited by the Reuters news agency, the company wants to file for an IPO as early as 2026, and the listing should realistically happen in 2027.

The exact amount DeepSeek wants to raise from the IPO and the final timeline are not clear yet. The details will be clarified in the coming months of preparations. What’s certain is that the process is already officially underway.

Valuation around 75 billion dollars, with investors including Tencent and CATL

In this funding round, DeepSeek is targeting a valuation of around 500 billion yuan, i.e. roughly $75 billion. It is building on the June financing round, in which the company raised $7.4 billion at an over $50 billion valuation. Back then, investors included Tencent, among others, as well as battery maker CATL; the founder himself, Liang Wenfeng, also contributed a significant amount.

The money will go primarily into three areas: computing infrastructure (i.e., more AI chips and servers), developing new models, and retaining key people. Today there’s a fierce battle over AI researchers’ salaries—both Chinese and American—that, until recently, seemed unthinkable. As we wrote in a separate article about the company’s finances, DeepSeek has record-rising revenues, but it will still spend far more on infrastructure than it earns. That’s exactly why it needs additional capital.

China is sending one AI company to the stock market after another

DeepSeek is not the only Chinese AI startup that this year is addressing its relationship with the stock market. Competing companies Z.AI and MiniMax are already listed in Hong Kong, and startup Moonshot AI has recently filed a formal IPO application. The Chinese AI sector is thus moving from the phase of “who will build the best model” to the phase of “who can turn it into a sustainable business that can stand up to investors in the public market”.

Despite rising valuations, Chinese AI companies are still significantly smaller than the biggest American players. Over the course of the year, OpenAI and Anthropic were trading around 2026 of a trillion dollars and above, which is well beyond where DeepSeek is heading. Getting listed on the stock exchange might be precisely the way to narrow this gap at least partially and secure the capital that American competitors have available much more easily.

What does this mean for the average user?

DeepSeek has won fans among developers worldwide, including in Slovakia, mainly because it releases its models as open-source and you can run them cheaply via API. For smaller companies and individuals, it’s a realistic—and much cheaper—alternative to paid Western services. Going public doesn’t directly threaten that strategy, but it does bring pressure the company hasn’t faced so far. A publicly traded company must regularly publish results and answer to shareholders, which over time may also change how generously it can afford to give away computing power for free—or for a symbolic price.

If an IPO really goes ahead, we’ll get to numbers that we can only guess at today from leaked reports from Chinese media. We’ll finally see in black and white whether DeepSeek is truly the cheap miracle people say it is—or just another AI company that’s still living on investor money.

Follow the China Planet website, subscribe to our monthly newsletter, and be sure to check out our Facebook page, the China Planet group, and join our Telegram, where we add the best offers and coupons from China every single day.