China's AI startup DeepSeek has reportedly imposed an unusual precondition for its $7.4 billion maiden fundraise: investors must agree not to poach the company's staff or encourage them to start their own ventures [1]. During a four-hour virtual meeting with prospective investors in May, founder Liang Wenfeng communicated this requirement, according to a fundraising-focused news outlet owned by 36Kr. CNBC was unable to independently verify this report [1].
This talent-poaching precondition highlights the intensifying competition among Chinese tech giants to secure top AI engineers, as the race to develop advanced AI and ultimately artificial general intelligence (AGI) accelerates [1]. DeepSeek reportedly closed its first external funding round this week, valuing the Hangzhou-based company at over $50 billion and making it China's most valuable AI-only startup [1]. The company, which had previously declined outside funding to focus on research, sought this latest fundraise after losing several key researchers to rivals [1].
Notably, Luo Fuli, a core contributor to DeepSeek's V3 model, left late last year to lead Xiaomi's MiMo team, which has since released AI models outperforming DeepSeek's on several benchmarks [1]. The broader Chinese AI sector is also experiencing significant talent movement: ByteDance lost two key AI developers to Tencent, and Tencent invested $20 million in a new AI lab founded by Juyang Lin, former lead researcher for Alibaba's Qwen models [1]. Alibaba has also made leadership changes in its Dingtalk app following internal debates about AI strategy [1].
Tencent has been actively recruiting talent trained at leading U.S. labs, hiring Yao Shunyu from OpenAI as chief AI scientist last year [1]. Both Yao and DeepSeek's Liang emphasize the importance of China fully committing to AGI development [1]. DeepSeek, Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance did not immediately respond to requests for comment [1].
CONCLUSION
DeepSeek's no-poaching condition for its $7.4 billion fundraise underscores the fierce competition for AI talent among China's tech giants. The company's new valuation and the ongoing movement of key researchers highlight the strategic importance of talent retention in the race toward advanced AI and AGI development.