DeepSeek

History

2025

Ban on employees from traveling abroad

Chinese authorities have banned key DeepSeek employees from traveling abroad. Obet became known in mid-March 2025. By order of the government, the company's management ordered specialists to hand over their passports. The restrictions were introduced after the DeepSeek project received the status of China's national treasure. According to The Information, the ban on travel outside China is aimed at preventing the leakage of confidential information, which can be a trade secret or even a state secret. Employee passports are held by DeepSeek's parent company, hedge fund High-Flyer.

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Фото: Bloomberg

DeepSeek is now operating under new, tougher restrictions imposed by the government. In addition to the ban on foreign travel, the Chinese government has begun to play a role in vetting the company's potential investors. The restrictions came weeks after Chinese authorities ordered AI researchers and entrepreneurs to avoid traveling to the US for fear of leaking trade secrets.

According to Bloomberg experts, the popularity of the DeepSeek neural network has led to an increase in investor interest in the Chinese stock market, especially in the shares of technology sector companies. Over the past month, the Chinese stock market has raised about $1.3 trillion in new funds from investors, including large hedge funds.

Earlier in the media there were reports that the leading Chinese telecommunications companies China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, as well as Lenovo, the cloud division of Tencent and the developer of software for enterprises Kingdee have already integrated an AI model from DeepSeek into their services. Officially, this is explained by the desire for "inclusive application of the latest AI technologies."^[1]

Founder Liang Wenfeng owns 84% of the company and has no intention of attracting investors

Liang Wenfeng, founder of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, owns 84% of the company and has no plans to attract investors. According to him, this will preserve the scientific focus of the project. The decision became known in March 2025 after negotiations with potential partners.

According to The Wall Street Journal, citing informed sources, the founder of DeepSeek told partners that he did not seek to attract investments, fearing external influence on the company's decisions. He is taking particular caution towards state-linked investors, believing that ties with Beijing will make it harder to achieve global adoption of DeepSeek's artificial intelligence models.

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Фото: Freepik

Despite refusing to attract investors, Liang Wenfeng does not exclude other forms of financial support. The state-owned Bank of China offered the company a loan at a low interest rate, according to sources familiar with the negotiations. In addition, in recent weeks, the founder of DeepSeek has discussed a potential collaboration with top executives from major Chinese technology companies, including Tencent and Alibaba.

In January 2025, DeepSeek released the R1 artificial intelligence model, comparable to the developments of the American OpenAI, but requiring significantly less hardware resources. According to sources close to the company, the launch of the new improved model is scheduled for April 2025.

An important aspect of DeepSeek's strategy is the technology distribution business model. Liang Wenfeng has no plans to charge for using the company's core AI models. Currently, access to these models is provided free of charge, and the founder intends to maintain this approach in the future.

The decision to maintain the company's independence comes amid growing interest in DeepSeek technologies from the global community. The company's chatbot has already attracted millions of users, although it periodically experiences technical problems due to the high load.^[2]

What is known about the founder of DeepSeek

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has made a lot of noise in Silicon Valley with the free reasoning model R1, as well as the powerful open V3, which outperforms most counterparts, including ChatGPT. At the same time, according to Reuters on January 28, 2025, the 39-year-old founder of DeepSeek Liang Wenfeng (Liang Wenfeng) in a matter of weeks became the face of the Chinese technology industry and its hope to overcome the constantly tightening export control from the United States. Read more here.