China's two leading artificial intelligence developers are approaching their stock market debuts. Moonshot AI wrapped up a funding round at a valuation of about $50 billion (67 trillion won), while DeepSeek was valued at 500 billion yuan (100 trillion won), securing what are expected to be their final rounds of private capital. Both companies plan to begin initial public offering procedures next year, a move expected to raise at least tens of trillions of won. The scale reflects a judgment that enormous capital is required to keep pace with the United States in the competition for AI supremacy.
Moonshot AI completed its fundraising based on a valuation of roughly $50 billion, Bloomberg reported on the 6th. The company is pursuing a Hong Kong listing targeted for the first quarter of next year. A person familiar with the matter said Moonshot AI is now positioned to begin gauging investor demand through pre-marketing sessions as early as this month. The IPO is expected to raise up to $5 billion (6.7 trillion won).
Moonshot AI's valuation has climbed steadily through successive funding rounds. In its previous round just before this summer, the company was valued at $31.5 billion (42 trillion won). Its annual recurring revenue, a gauge of future sales, is expected to rise from $1 billion currently to $2 billion by the end of the year. Moonshot AI drew global attention in July when it released Kimi K3, an open model. The model was assessed as matching the performance of flagship models from OpenAI and Anthropic on some benchmarks.
DeepSeek secured at least 80 billion yuan (16 trillion won) in its latest funding round. The amount far exceeded its original target, lifting its valuation ahead of an IPO expected early next year. The round valued DeepSeek at 500 billion yuan.
People familiar with the matter said DeepSeek initially sought to raise around 50 billion yuan (10 trillion won) but saw demand exceed expectations after successfully releasing its latest AI model. Based on signed term sheets, they added, the final amount could approach 100 billion yuan (20 trillion won). Battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CATL) and Tencent Holdings, operator of WeChat, have committed the largest investments.
The fundraising is expected to pave the way for one of the most closely watched Chinese listings in years. DeepSeek has gained momentum since unveiling V4 Flash. The model was judged to have exceeded expectations for cost-performance compared with leaders such as Anthropic and OpenAI.
Both companies are moving from fundraising to public listings because technology development requires vast amounts of capital. DeepSeek plans to deploy at least 160,000 of Huawei's latest accelerators at a large data center under construction in Inner Mongolia. That could become the largest cluster of Huawei AI chips anywhere. DeepSeek has released software it developed with Huawei for programming AI chips.
DeepSeek's fundraising also drew controversy. The company temporarily suspended the deal after private remarks by founder Liang Wenfeng circulated on social media. Liang, known as a reclusive executive, offered an optimistic outlook at a closed-door meeting with investors in May, saying the only difference between the United States and DeepSeek was computing resources and that the AI gap with the United States would narrow significantly within five years. Liang particularly stressed that Nvidia's dominance was weakening and that China's domestic AI chip ecosystem would prove its competitiveness within a year, opening new opportunities.
Uncertainties remain. Chinese regulators have opened data security investigations into DeepSeek and Moonshot AI, according to The Information. With oversight of China's AI industry tightening, it is unclear how valuations or IPO timelines may be affected. Concerns over governance and safety are also mounting.
