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Blog · 23 Oct 2026 · Data as of 22 Oct 2026

DeepSeek valuation and funding in 2026

DeepSeek, the Hangzhou lab that rattled US tech stocks with its low-cost models in January 2025, only began taking outside money in 2026. Here is what is known about its valuation, funding and revenue, and where each figure comes from.

The closed round: $51.82B

DeepSeek's first external funding round valued it at about RMB350.88B, or $51.82B post-money, according to Caixin (17 Jul 2026), in a round backed by Tencent and CATL. The scoreboard records $7.4B raised in that round. Earlier funding from High-Flyer is not included in that total.

That $51.82B is the valuation the scoreboard scores. It places DeepSeek just above Moonshot AI ($50B, 6 Oct 2026) and about twice Mistral AI ($24B, 8 Sep 2026) among the independent labs outside the US.

The round in talks: about $75B

CNBC reported on 6 Oct 2026 that DeepSeek is considering expanding its current round to as much as RMB100B (about $14.9B), double its earlier RMB50B target, while seeking a valuation of about RMB500B, or $75B. According to CNBC's sources:

The round had not closed as of 22 Oct 2026, so the scoreboard shows the $75B as "in talks" and does not score it.

Revenue: a $1B estimate

DeepSeek does not disclose revenue. The board uses Sacra's estimate of about $1B in annualized revenue for September 2026 and marks it EST on the site. On that estimate, the closed valuation is about 52x revenue and the target valuation about 75x (see valuation-to-revenue multiples).

Where DeepSeek ranks

As of 22 Oct 2026, DeepSeek is 9th of 10 labs on the scoreboard with a score of 42.6 and full 5-of-5 coverage:

Its weakest components are the odds (0.8 of 100) and revenue (35.4, since $1B is far below Anthropic's $67.2B on the log scale). Its Artificial Analysis index jumped from 39.5 to 45.1 between the 17 and 19 Oct snapshots (news). The full breakdown is on the DeepSeek lab page.

Sources

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