DeepSeek Doubles Revenue to $1B, Then Passes the Bill to Investors With No Votes

Liang Wenfeng took a fresh number to his investors: DeepSeek's annualized revenue run rate has crossed $1 billion, more than double the pace of a few months ago ¹²³. A run rate projects what twelve months of the current pace would bring in; it is not booked revenue ³. Part of the doubling is price, not demand: the lab lifted model prices by 2.3 to 4.5 times ³.

The round buys the next training run

The same meetings carried a more telling figure: more than 70% of DeepSeek's compute still goes to training new models, under 30% to serving the customers who generate the revenue ³. The second round now closing targets 50 billion yuan ($7.45 billion) at a 500 billion yuan valuation, about $75 billion, by the end of October ³⁴⁵. It was suspended once in July, then revived in August at nearly $8 billion↗, with the stated uses being compute, model development and talent ⁴⁵. At that price, investors would pay roughly 75 times the run rate the founder just disclosed ³⁴.

No votes, five years locked, 84% for Liang

June's first outside round took in about $7.4 billion↗ at more than $50 billion post-money; Liang put in 20 billion yuan of it himself, Tencent 10 billion, CATL 5 billion ⁵. Outside backers bought units in a limited partnership Liang controls, carrying a five-year lockup and zero votes; the state AI fund invested directly and is the only holder with votes and no lockup ⁶. Liang reportedly keeps about 84% of the economics and near-total control ¹. CITIC Securities is hired for a STAR Market listing meant to begin this year↗, size and timing undecided ⁵.

MiniMax already walked this path

MiniMax doubled on its January Hong Kong debut and later sank to roughly a quarter of that level, a slide that followed its May announcement of STAR Market exploration ¹⁷. Its first half did not help: $116.6 million of revenue, an adjusted net loss that doubled to $293 million↗, and an $800 million ARR figure annualized from a single week of August ⁸⁹.

The bull case has a ceiling

Demand held through the price hike ³, and Hong Kong does pay for delivered revenue: Z.ai has climbed from a $7.1 billion IPO valuation toward a $54 billion market value, roughly 34 times its claimed $1.6 billion ARR ¹⁵⁸. What the bulls cannot yet price is a run rate that doubles on a price rise, a round that stopped once ⁴, and a listing path that has already broken one peer's stock ¹⁷.

The close comes first, then the filing

The end-October close is the first marker; a STAR filing is the second. The legend was a $6 million training run ¹. The business is two rounds worth nearly $15 billion in five months, and the next model has to carry both ³⁵.