DeepSeek's nearly $16 billion round draws Chinese tech giants and state-backed institutions

[The Information] DeepSeek's nearly $16 billion funding round this month drew not only a flood of capital but a who's who of Chinese tech investors and some of the country's most powerful state-backed institutions, according to details of the round obtained by The Information. It was only the second fundraising round for the three-year-old company, which was the only major AI model developer to eschew external capital until its first fundraising in April. The new round included previous backers—Tencent and battery maker CATL remain DeepSeek's top two investors—as well as other tech companies, notably memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies and its chairman Zhu Yiming, according to details provided by two people with direct knowledge of the matter.