China's DeepSeek raises $15.9 billion, pushing October startup funding to $59 billion

Chinese AI company DeepSeek raised $15.9 billion in October, the largest startup funding deal ever for a Chinese company. It helped push worldwide startup funding to $59 billion for the month, up 45% from a year earlier, according to Crunchbase data.

What changed

DeepSeek's round values the company at $90 billion. That makes it the second most valuable Chinese company after ByteDance. Among private companies that build the most advanced AI models, it now ranks third, behind U.S. firms Anthropic and OpenAI.

Another Chinese AI lab, Moonshot AI, reportedly reached a $50 billion value in October. It has also reportedly filed in confidence to go public on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

By country, U.S. companies raised $28 billion and Chinese companies raised $20.6 billion. China had not seen more than $20 billion in a single month since June 2018, when Ant Group raised $14 billion.

Where the money went

Seven companies raised rounds of $1 billion or more. Together they took just over 40% of all October funding. Overall, 66% of the money went to companies built around AI. Besides DeepSeek, the big rounds were:

• Re:Build, a manufacturing startup: $2.1 billion
• Axiom, which builds power and grid capacity for data centers: $2 billion
• Ramp, a spend management platform: $1.85 billion
• Tenstorrent, a chip company: $1.5 billion
• Kalshi, a prediction market, and Flapping Airplanes, an AI lab: $1 billion each

Why it matters

Venture funding is money investors give young companies in return for a share of them. When so much of it lands in a few AI firms, those firms get the resources to build new tools fast. That shows where new products, jobs and competition for your business may come from.

The deals also show the money is not only about chatbots. Chips, power for data centers and factory capacity all drew large rounds.

What happens next

The U.S. IPO market was slow in October as it waited for Anthropic, which is expected to go public in November. An IPO is when a private company first sells shares to the public. The offering could top SpaceX's June listing, which raised $85.7 billion.

Deals are also changing hands. At least nine venture-backed companies sold for more than $1 billion last month, including Uber's $2.3 billion purchase of ezCater. With two months left, 2026 has already set records for acquisitions, IPOs and funding rounds.

What is not yet clear is how widely the momentum will spread beyond a handful of giants. The figures are based on reported data, and Cohere's targeted $5 billion round was left out of the October total because no close was reported.