Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek is finalising its first external funding round of more than 50 billion yuan ($7.4bn, £5.5bn) at a valuation of just under $60bn, a more than six-fold jump from its $10bn valuation two months ago, the South China Morning Post reported.

Investors include Tencent Holdings, expected to invest 10bn yuan, with NetEase and JD.com expected to contribute about 3bn yuan each, the report said.

CATL, the world’s largest EV battery manufacturer, was expected to contribute about 5bn yuan, the report said, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.

Venture capital firms including IDG Capital, Monolith, Loyal Valley Capital and Shixiang Tech are also reportedly expected to contribute, with DeepSeek founder and chief executive Liang Wenfeng also expected to contribute about 20bn yuan of his own capital.

State-backed funds are also expected to take part, but final terms, including which vehicles will provide the capital, have reportedly not been settled.

DeepSeek, backed by chief executive Liang’s highly profitable quantitative fund High-Flyer Quant, previously resisted bringing in external capital, but recently decided to do so in order to secure a well-defined market value to help retain top talent, according to local media reports.

The start-up disrupted the AI world last year with the release of powerful, cost-efficient models, and is continuing in the same vein with recent releases.

It said at the time of the release of its V4 model in April that prices would “drop significantly” in the second half of this year when Huawei’s Ascend 950PR supernodes are expected to ship at scale.

Chinese chipmakers including Huawei, Cambricon and MetaX said they are optimising their AI processing chips for DeepSeek’s V4, as part of China’s drive to boost its locally developed AI supply chain.