DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and Manus Parent Advance Major Funding Plans

What changed

Three Chinese AI companies are moving toward much bigger financial futures.

• Manus parent Butterfly Effect raised more than $500 million from Boyu Capital, IDG Capital, Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund, after Meta acquired it for more than $2 billion.
• Moonshot AI closed funding at a reported $50 billion valuation and is reportedly seeking a $5 billion Hong Kong IPO in the first quarter of 2027.
• DeepSeek is reportedly nearing a $12 billion to $15 billion round at a $75 billion valuation, led by Tencent and CATL.

Why it matters

This is a funding surge with a public-market test attached. Private investors are putting enormous values on companies whose worth will soon face the harder discipline of listed-market pricing.

Moonshot offers the clearest near-term test. Its reported annual recurring revenue is expected to reach $2 billion by December, up from $1 billion now. If the IPO arrives in early 2027, investors will have to decide whether that growth justifies a $50 billion private valuation and a possible $5 billion public raise.

DeepSeek’s proposed round is even more striking. A $75 billion valuation would make founder Liang Wenfeng’s paper wealth roughly $36 billion. That figure depends on a financing event and could change sharply before any exit. The same goes for Butterfly Effect: its valuation remains undisclosed, and its Hong Kong listing is not expected to begin until at least 2027.

The practical lesson is simple: these companies are no longer being valued only as promising AI builders. They are being positioned as major financial assets before public investors have a full market record to judge them. That can accelerate expansion, but it also makes the eventual IPOs unusually important tests of whether private-market confidence matches public-market reality.