State Investors Took 27% of DeepSeek’s Nearly $16B Round

The Information reported on 30 October that Chinese state-owned investors supplied 27% of DeepSeek’s latest funding round, which it put at nearly $16 billion, and that DeepSeek doubled the round’s size because of surging black-market prices for Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, according to Techmeme’s summary of the report. By our arithmetic, 27% of nearly $16 billion is up to about $4.3 billion from state-owned investors.

We have not read the article itself, which is behind a paywall. Its headline is “Behind DeepSeek’s $16 Billion Funding: Chinese Tech Titans and State Players”, and its opening says the round “involved not only a deluge of capital but a who’s who of Chinese tech investors” and “some of the country’s most powerful state-backed institutions”.

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Update (30 Oct): round details and the valuation. PANews, citing The Information, reported that the round raised 105.5 billion yuan (about $15.8 billion) from nearly 30 investors and valued DeepSeek at about 615.5 billion yuan. Tencent put in 10 billion yuan in each of the two rounds, and CATL and its chairman Zeng Yuqun put in 5 billion yuan in the first round and 10 billion yuan in the second, PANews reported. Industrial investors including CXMT, SMIC, vivo, Meituan, Geely, Midea, Luxshare, Trip.com and Xiaohongshu also joined, some with 1 billion to 3 billion yuan each, and the national AI industry investment fund again put in 1 billion yuan. On those reported figures, the new money equals about 17% of the reported valuation (our arithmetic). A KuCoin news headline gave the round as 10.55 billion yuan at a 61.55 billion yuan valuation, a tenth of the figures that the same KuCoin page also carries from ChainCatcher, citing The Information: 105.5 billion and 615.5 billion yuan.

What Was Reported

Techmeme summarised the report as: “Sources: DeepSeek doubled its latest round’s size due to surging black market Nvidia Blackwell chip prices, with Chinese state-owned investors representing 27%”. A summary posted on X by @choblin29 adds figures we could not check against the article: “A server containing eight B300 GPUs now costs $2.85 million in China, more than FIVE TIMES its price in most countries”, and state-owned investors “supplied 27% of the round, up from just 2% in DeepSeek’s previous financing”.

The size of the round was reported earlier. Reuters said on 22 October, citing sources, that “DeepSeek has raised about 100 billion yuan ($14.98 billion) in its latest funding round” and “will have doubled its original fundraising target of 50 billion yuan”. Reuters named CATL and Tencent, “both existing shareholders”, among the investors. We covered the target in our piece on DeepSeek’s valuation plans, and DeepSeek’s first outside round in our piece on its $7.4 billion raise.

What Was Posted on X

A summary of The Information’s report posted on X: it says DeepSeek doubled its round to nearly $16 billion largely because black-market Nvidia Blackwell prices were soaring, that a server with eight B300 GPUs now costs $2.85 million in China, and that state-owned investors supplied 27% of the round, up from 2%. We could not check these figures against the article.

The Chip Price Behind the Round

Earlier reporting gives a baseline for the black-market price. DigitalToday reported on 1 May that “as of April 30, a B300 server traded in China’s black market at about 7 million yuan per unit”, citing four people familiar with the matter, that in the United States the server “trades at about $550,000 per unit”, and that “In China, the same server is trading at about twice the U.S. price”. By our arithmetic, twice $550,000 is about $1.1 million.

If the $2.85 million figure in the X summary is accurate, it is about 2.6 times that April black-market level and about 5.2 times the US price DigitalToday reported, by our arithmetic. The X summary describes the server as containing eight B300 GPUs; on that basis, $2.85 million is about $356,000 per GPU, by our arithmetic.

As an illustration only, and an upper bound because the money also pays for staff, power and buildings, nearly $16 billion would cover about 5,600 servers at $2.85 million each, or about 45,000 GPUs, by our arithmetic. Neither The Information’s headline nor the summaries say how much of the round goes to chips or how DeepSeek buys them.

Why the Price Matters

DigitalToday wrote in May that “China’s government has not allowed imports, and formal exports and imports of high-performance data-centre GPUs such as the B300 had not begun at the time of writing”. As we read these reports, the price of compute in China is set by scarcity, and the reported doubling of DeepSeek’s round links that price to the capital a Chinese lab raises.

Nvidia’s own China numbers are a separate question, which our piece on its China revenue count covers. Nothing in these reports says Nvidia sold the servers in question.

The Structural Read

As we read these reports, the round links two things: state-owned investors putting in more of DeepSeek’s capital, and the price of compute in China, where DigitalToday wrote that imports of such GPUs had not been allowed.

By our arithmetic, the X summary’s $2.85 million is about 2.6 times the April black-market level DigitalToday reported (itself about twice the US price of $550,000) and about 5.2 times the US price, if the summary is accurate; for the eight GPUs the summary describes, that is about $356,000 per GPU.

Reuters reported on 22 October that the round doubled DeepSeek’s original target of 50 billion yuan; Techmeme’s summary of The Information’s report gives black-market Blackwell prices as the reason.

Three Implications

FOR CHINESE AI LABS Techmeme’s summary of The Information’s report says DeepSeek doubled its round because of black-market Blackwell prices; as we read these reports, the cost of chips shows up in how much capital DeepSeek raised.

FOR DEEPSEEK’S OWNERSHIP According to the same summary, state-owned investors represented 27% of the round; the X summary says that is up from 2% in DeepSeek’s previous financing, a figure we could not check.

FOR NVIDIA These reports concern servers traded on China’s black market; nothing in them says Nvidia sold those servers, and our earlier piece covers how Nvidia counts its China revenue.

The Business Engineer Lens

This story maps onto the Business Engineer framework The Nine Layers of AI.

The analysis puts it this way: “This entire ecosystem has been shaped by constraints, bottlenecks, chokepoints, and scarcity at every layer.”

As we read it, the reported price of a B300 server in China is that scarcity with a number on it. The analysis does not discuss DeepSeek or its October 2026 round.

What Is Not Established

We have not read The Information’s article. The 27% share and the reason for the larger round come from Techmeme’s summary, and the $2.85 million price, the comparison with other countries and the earlier 2% share come only from the summary posted on X. Neither summary names the state-owned investors. Reuters’ figures are from 22 October and cite sources. The conversions, the per-GPU price and the illustration of what the round could buy are our arithmetic, not reported figures. We did not contact DeepSeek or Nvidia.

The Bottom Line

According to Techmeme’s summary of The Information’s report, state-owned investors supplied 27% of DeepSeek’s nearly $16 billion round, up to about $4.3 billion by our arithmetic, and the round doubled because of black-market Blackwell prices. If the $2.85 million server price in the summary posted on X by @choblin29 is accurate, which we could not check against the article, it is about 2.6 times the April black-market level DigitalToday reported, by our arithmetic.