The Chinese company of artificial intelligence Deepseek has made global news to help unleash a huge syneff in the stock of American technology on Monday, with Nvidia that dropped almost 20%.
In China, the hype around Deepseek sent actions of some public companies with alleged ties. The problem: there is no evidence in which these companies have ever invested or collaborated with Deepseek to begin with.
Deepseek Huajin Capital and Zhejiang Orient is said to be 10% on Monday, while a research company called Sublime China Information has jumped by 20% for presumably collaborating with Deepseek on its AI models. (These are the daily legal gains in Chinese exchanges.)
However, Sublime China Information denied collaborating with Deepseek in a dissemination and Huajin Capital has denied a Chinese business point that has ever revealed an investment in depth. The Zhejiang Orient investment company did not respond to a Techcrunch commentary request, but there is no public tests that are an investor in Deepseek.
The voices seem to have originated from un proven Chinese lists – which have become viral – of various companies listed in public presumably linked to Deepseek.
Deepseek, a private company, has never publicly announced any VC investment, while Chinese company registers do not mention the VC companies on the Deepseek CAP table. Instead, its founder Liang Wenfeng is listed as the beneficial owner of all three entities that form Deepseek. Deepseek is financed by the High-Flyer Quantum Company (of which Wenfeng is CEO) and does not plan to raise funds, Wenfeng has said the Chinese waves of the average.
In an interview of 2023 with the same outlet, Wenfeng said he had discussions with different financing sources, but the VCs “seemed hesitant” on the investment in a company focused on research, giving priority to marketing.
Deepseek did not respond to Techcrunch’s commentary request.
