DeepSeek reportedly in talks to raise $1.5B, then IPO | TechCrunch

Last day to exhibit your breakthrough to 10,000+ tech leaders at Disrupt is on Oct 2. Book Exhibit Table Now. Disrupt doors open Oct. 13. Get your pass and bring someone with you at 50% off. REGISTER NOW. DeepSeek, the Chinese large language model developer, is preparing for a 2027 IPO debut, but it could come as early as the end of this year as it also looks to raise around $1.5 billion in new funds at about a $71 billion valuation, Bloomberg reports. The news comes after the company raised $7 billion in funds just a month ago at around a $50 billion valuation in its first-ever outside funding round. The China-based startup, founded in 2023, made headlines early last year after releasing AI technology that was both more efficient and more cost-effective than U.S. model makers. It has since grown exponentially in popularity. In June, it accounted for nearly 23% of all the tens of trillions of tokens processed by enterprise-focused AI gateway Vercel, the company reports. This is compared to Anthropic taking 32% of tokens. DeepSeek continues to show how Chinese open source models perform within a few breaths of top U.S. AI labs, despite U.S. export controls on chips. DeepSeek’s cloud