DeepSeek Closes Roughly 100 Billion Yuan Round With CATL and Tencent Among Backers

DeepSeek raised its fundraising target at least twice while negotiating with investors, moving from an initial 50 billion yuan to 80 billion yuan before settling at about 100 billion yuan, the report said. The round points to the company's ambition to compete globally with Anthropic and OpenAI, according to the same report.

Chief executive Liang Wenfeng told a recent investor meeting that DeepSeek's annualized revenue run rate has passed US$1 billion, more than double the less than US$500 million recorded a few months earlier, according to the report. Liang said customers did not leave after API prices were raised and demand remained strong. Revenue comes mainly from model API calls.

Separately, posts circulating on October 22 claimed that the board secretary of CATL had been beaten during a roadshow at a fund company, with speculation that the fund complained about the company's limited buybacks while its share price kept falling. An informed source told Yicai that the claim was untrue and that the board secretary did not attend the roadshow.

Hangzhou Wahaha Group's legal representative, chairman and general manager Xu Simin has left the company, according to media reports on October 22. The industrial and commercial registration had not been updated as of publication, and Xu did not answer questions from reporters. A Wahaha employee said Xu resigned voluntarily, partly because of the food contract manufacturing supervision rules scheduled to take effect at the end of this year, which make brand owners liable when contract factories run into problems. Hongsheng Group, controlled by Zong Fuli, has long been a contract manufacturer for Wahaha. Another person familiar with the matter said production equipment at several Wahaha plants has been sold and that Zong is selling some properties held by the group.

Shoppers said on October 21 that they had received recall notices from Sam's Club for certain batches of "Good Health" oyster extract capsules, after customs found abnormalities in spot checks on the imported product, according to Yicai and Chen Bao. The retailer said it took the item off shelves at customs' request and is offering refunds only. Some buyers said they had purchased the capsules while preparing for pregnancy.

ByteDance's Seed team has posted a batch of robotics recruitment roles, extending from algorithms and simulation to data collection and robot hardware, with monthly salaries of 55,000 to 85,000 yuan for embodied data positions, according to AI Zhijian. The US State Department sanctioned MiraclePlus, the incubator founded by former Baidu chief operating officer Lu Qi, along with three affiliated funds and Shanghai Zhisuan Technology over an alleged trade secret case involving a former Google engineer; MiraclePlus said it never invested in Zhisuan and that the sanctions came without prior communication, according to Aiyunying. eBay denied a rumor that it was cutting 80 percent of its China staff, saying the figure was speculation and that a global adjustment affected 9 percent of employees, and that it has not withdrawn from the China market, according to Lanjinger and IT Home.