DeepSeek raises about $15 billion — two days after the US ordered agencies to remove it

Washington shut one door; Chinese capital opened a bigger one two days later. Bloomberg reported on October 22, 2026 that DeepSeek, the Hangzhou-based AI lab, raised about $15 billion, or roughly 100 billion yuan — one of the largest funding rounds ever for a Chinese company. Tencent and CATL, the world's largest maker of electric-vehicle batteries, were among the biggest backers.

On October 20, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) order requiring US federal civilian agencies to strip DeepSeek products from their systems was published in the Federal Register. The timing makes the contrast stark: shut out of the US government market, DeepSeek drew more money at home than ever before.

1. How big is $15 billion?

DeepSeek was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer, which financed its early work. It drew global attention in early 2025 with R1, a free, open-weight reasoning model. Its fundraising has accelerated sharply this year.

According to Bloomberg, DeepSeek raised its target at least twice during talks, from 50 billion yuan to 80 billion yuan and then to the final figure. For comparison, Moonshot AI, maker of Kimi, raised $2 billion at a $20 billion valuation in May; Zhipu AI (Z.ai) and MiniMax, which listed in Hong Kong in January, are worth about $29 billion and $7.2 billion. We covered Moonshot's latest model in "Kimi K3.1 Pro launch."

The money is expected to go to data centers and open models, with a mainland China IPO floated for as early as 2027. Liang holds an estimated 81.6% of the Chinese operating entity, according to WireScreen.

2. What exactly did the US ban?

DHS cited three concerns: possible Chinese government access to DeepSeek's infrastructure, collection of personal information and user tracking, and the potential transfer of sensitive government data to China. The Navy, NASA and other agencies had already blocked DeepSeek's chatbot on their own more than a year and a half ago; this order makes it a rule across civilian agencies.

The scope is the notable part. Because open-weight models can be downloaded and modified by anyone, government contractors now have to check whether any product they sell contains a DeepSeek-derived model.

3. Why the two events point in different directions

DeepSeek earns little, if anything, from US government contracts, so the direct revenue hit is small. Bloomberg framed the raise as a sign of DeepSeek's ambition to compete globally with Anthropic and OpenAI. The broader split — the US-led Pax Silica coalition versus China's WAICO — is explained in today's "What is WAICO." DeepSeek's previous model is covered in "DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores 81.1 on LiveBench."

4. What remains unconfirmed

• Company confirmation: The amount and investors rest on anonymous sources; DeepSeek has said nothing officially.
• Valuation: Not reported for this round. The last figures are $50 billion (June) and about $71 billion (July).
• Signing date of the order: July 24 or June 26. The Federal Register text (reported docket DHS-2026-0628) would settle it.
• Spread to the private sector: The order does not bind companies or states. No reports yet of states or banks following.