Chinese AI startup DeepSeek reaches $1 billion annualised revenue run rate

Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has reached an annualised revenue run rate of $1 billion, more than doubling from less than $500 million just a few months ago, according to a report by The Information.

Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has reached an annualised revenue run rate of $1 billion, more than doubling from less than $500 million just a few months ago, according to a report by The Information.

The figure, reported on Thursday, reflects the company’s current pace of revenue generation rather than $1 billion in revenue already earned. CEO Liang Wenfeng reportedly shared the latest figure during a recent meeting with investors.

The sharp increase has been partly attributed to higher prices for DeepSeek’s application programming interface (API) services. According to The Information, the company raised the prices of some of its models by between 2.3 and 4.5 times, while demand for its AI services remained strong.

Despite the rapid growth in revenue, Liang has reportedly told investors that monetisation remains secondary to research and development. More than 70% of DeepSeek’s computing capacity is still being used to train new models, while less than 30% is allocated to inference, or running existing models.

The company is also preparing for another major fundraising round. DeepSeek is seeking to raise about 50 billion yuan ($7.45 billion) at a valuation of around 500 billion yuan, or approximately $74 billion, according to people familiar with the plans. The round is expected to be completed by the end of October.

The fundraising follows DeepSeek’s first external funding round, completed earlier this year, in which the company raised about 50 billion yuan and reached a post-money valuation of more than $50 billion. The unusual structure of that round allowed founder and CEO Liang Wenfeng to retain significant control over the company, with investors placing much of their capital into a limited partnership managed by Liang rather than investing directly in DeepSeek.

DeepSeek is also preparing for a potential initial public offering on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR Market. The company has hired CITIC Securities to work on the IPO process, although the timing, valuation and size of the eventual offering have not been finalised.

The rapid commercial growth comes as DeepSeek continues to invest heavily in developing next-generation AI models and competing with major Chinese and U.S. technology companies.