DeepSeek approaches $1 billion in revenue ahead of IPO

DeepSeek, the Chinese company behind a series of cheap AI language models, is growing fast. The company's annual revenue run rate, meaning what it would earn in a full year if the latest month's earnings continued, has now reached around $1 billion. That is more than double what it was a few months ago.

In the first seven months of 2026, DeepSeek earned around $70.7 million, ten times as much as in all of 2025. According to founder and CEO Liang Wenfeng, the growth is partly due to the company raising prices in August on its API, the technical access that other companies use to build their own products on top of DeepSeek's AI. Prices rose between 2.3 and 4.5 times, apparently without scaring customers away. According to the company, the API business had a gross margin of almost 83 percent through July, meaning very high earnings per service sold.

At the same time, DeepSeek is working to close a new funding round in which it hopes to raise around 50 billion yuan, equivalent to about $7.5 billion. The round is planned to close by the end of October and would value the company at around 500 billion yuan, about $75 billion.

DeepSeek has also hired the Chinese investment bank CITIC Securities to handle an upcoming IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market, which is intended for technology and growth companies. The IPO itself is not expected until 2027. If the plan succeeds, DeepSeek will, according to several sources, become the most valuable pure-play AI company listed outside the US.

DeepSeek first became known for being able to match large American AI models at a fraction of the price, which sent ripples through the global AI industry. The new figures show that the company is now also starting to make serious money from that technology.