DeepSeek taps CITIC Securities for Shanghai STAR Market IPO, valuation could hit $70B
智东西 · wechat · 2026-09-09
DeepSeek has hired CITIC Securities to prepare for an IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market, Reuters reports, with the company planning to start the process this year. Timing, offering size, and target valuation are undetermined; neither DeepSeek nor CITIC has commented.
- Funding context: DeepSeek raised $7.4B in June at a $50B+ post-money valuation — founder Liang Wenfeng put in 20B RMB personally, with Tencent (10B RMB) and CATL (5B RMB) becoming the largest outside shareholders. July reports put a newer round at a 500B RMB ($70B) valuation.
- Use of funds: compute infrastructure, model R&D, and talent retention; some staff have left for better-funded rivals like ByteDance and Xiaomi.
- Sector trend: Zhipu and MiniMax have listed in Hong Kong; Moonshot reportedly filed secretly for a HK IPO. Still, a gap persists versus US peers — Anthropic's listing could value it near $2T, OpenAI's planned IPO around $1T.
- On the product side: DeepSeek plans to launch V4.1 Flash around Sept 10, claiming it beats V4 Pro on performance, cost, and speed; V4 Pro traffic will be rerouted to V4.1 Flash at Flash pricing.
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