Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has reached an annualized revenue run rate of $1 billion, doubling its revenue from under $500 million just months ago.

This remarkable growth was fueled by a strategic increase in application programming interface (API) pricing by 2.3 to 4.5 times, which did not significantly affect customer retention due to high global demand for their cost-effective AI systems and agent-powering architectures.

Despite the financial success, the company continued to prioritize research and development, dedicating over 70% of its compute power to training next-generation models.

DeepSeek is planning a $7.5 billion funding round and aims for a future listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.