Moonshot, DeepSeek, and the Great Chinese AI IPO Rush

Two of China’s AI darlings are—according to media reports, at least—headed for an IPO.

Moonshot AI, the Pink-Floyd inspired startup behind Kimi, is reportedly preparing a Hong Kong listing within six months. The startup is close to finalizing a funding round that values the startup at just over $30 billion–and then, according to Bloomberg, will immediately turn around and try to raise even more money.

The Beijing-based developer just released K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter model that’s topped several AI benchmarks and shrinks the gap with U.S. frontier models even further. Moonshot’s Hong Kong IPO also follows two of its peers, Minimax and Z.ai, which both debuted in the Chinese city in early January.

DeepSeek, the Hangzhou-based developer that’s perhaps China’s most respected AI lab–is also pursuing an IPO. But it’s instead aiming for Shanghai’s STAR market, the city’s Nasdaq-style tech board, with a listing as early as the second quarter of 2027.

The company doesn’t really need external funds: Its founder, Liang Wenfeng, runs High-Flyer, a quantitative hedge fund with deep enough pockets to bankroll years of AI research without outside capital. 

Yet DeepSeek raised $7.4 billion in its first-ever external funding round in June—at a valuation north of $50 billion—and is reportedly now seeking fresh capital at a valuation as high as $71 billion ahead of the IPO.

Some reports have suggested that DeepSeek needed to raise funds to retain talent. Rival startups have dangled stock options and high valuations to poach the lab’s researchers, meaning it needed to find some way to make itself more attractive.

DeepSeek’s funding round was a little unusual. According to The Information, commercial investors, like Tencent, JD.com, and CATL, accepted a five-year lock-up and zero voting rights, while China’s National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, a state vehicle, got to invest directly, with voting rights and no lock-up. (Liang himself wrote the biggest check: 20 billion yuan, or almost $3 billion)

There’s long been an onshore-offshore split when it comes to Chinese........

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