DeepSeek Seeks 800B Yuan Round; CATL Doubles Down on AI Power Supply Chain
创业邦 · wechat · 2026-10-10
DeepSeek is raising a new round of at least 80 billion yuan with CATL and Tencent among lead investors, after CATL invested 5 billion yuan in its 51-billion-yuan first round in June. The analysis: CATL's Zeng Yuqun aims to lock in the largest customer on the AI power supply chain — electricity accounts for 60-70% of LLM operating costs per Changjiang Securities.
DeepSeek is turning asset-heavy: it plans a gigawatt-scale data center in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, with at least 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT chips (theoretical procurement cost over 40 billion yuan at the 250k-yuan retail price), mainly for inference, coming online late 2027 to early 2028; training still relies on Nvidia. Ulanqab offers cheap power, the independent West Inner Mongolia grid, and green-power direct supply.
CATL has spent over 10.5 billion yuan on 'compute-power synergy' in 2026: 4.1B into HVDC leader Zhongheng Electric (31% share), 6.4B to become 21Vianet's largest shareholder, plus the DeepSeek stake — assembling a green power/storage/distribution/compute vertical loop, shifting from selling cells to selling full energy solutions for AI data centers. The author reads it as strategic positioning amid slowing core growth, and why Liang Wenfeng chose Zeng: he brings a complete energy solution, not just capital.
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