China's DeepSeek has completed a funding round of about 100 billion yuan, or close to 15 billion dollars, according to Bloomberg and Reuters. Tencent and CATL are among the largest investors. The initial target was 50 billion yuan and was raised to 80 billion before closing at the final amount. The money will support infrastructure and model development, and the round is linked to preparations for a possible listing on Shanghai's STAR Market.

What it means: DeepSeek became known in the West for showing that competitive models could be trained at far lower cost than the market believed. Now, with one of the largest sums raised by an AI company outside the US, it gains resources that bring it closer to the American labs. The participation of Tencent and CATL shows that Chinese industry sees artificial intelligence as strategic infrastructure rather than a simple product. A key question is access to chips, since US export restrictions still apply, so much of the money will probably go to domestic hardware. For European and Greek businesses that use DeepSeek's open models, the funding means the company will keep releasing new versions, often with low usage costs. At the same time, several governments have restricted the use of its services in the public sector over data security concerns. Running open models locally, without sending data to third parties, remains the safest option for anyone who wants to use them.

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