Citic Securities was one of the four underwriters tapped by the Hangzhou-based firm, which aims to begin the IPO process this year to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Nasdaq-like Star market, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information was private.
DeepSeek and Citic Securities did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside normal business hours on Wednesday.
The progress towards an IPO comes as the company is moving to complete a pre-IPO round of financing that could value it at about 500 billion yuan (US$74 billion) before investment.
Moonshot, developer of the Kimi K3 model series, was also raising a final round of financing that could value it at around US$50 billion before the IPO, in which it aims to raise US$3 billion to US$5 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg, citing sources.
