Reports indicate that Yan Wentao, a post-90s partner at Hillhouse Growth, may be joining DeepSeek as its Chief Financial Officer, with the departure process reportedly already initiated internally at Hillhouse. Born in 1991, Yan has been involved in investments in companies such as ByteDance, Xiaohongshu, and MiniMax.
According to a report on September 14th, Yan Wentao, the 90s-born partner at Hillhouse Growth, is expected to take on the CFO role at DeepSeek. Sources suggest that Yan has started the internal exit procedure at Hillhouse and, barring any unexpected developments, could officially assume his new position shortly. If confirmed, this would mark a significant non-technical executive hire for DeepSeek since its inception.
Earlier, on September 9th, Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the matter, reported that DeepSeek has engaged CITIC Securities to prepare for a potential initial public offering (IPO) on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market. The company plans to initiate the IPO process this year, though the potential timing, fundraising size, and target valuation have yet to be determined.
Yan Wentao, who was born in 1991, has previously participated in investments in notable companies including ByteDance, Xiaohongshu, and MiniMax. In July of this year, Yan disclosed at the 14th Venture Capital Conference that he had been researching large models since 2020 and began focusing on embodied intelligence in 2023.
Against the backdrop of accelerating capitalization in the domestic large model sector, DeepSeek is advancing on two fronts: expediting new financing rounds while continuously releasing new models. On the financing side, DeepSeek completed a financing round of approximately $7.4 billion (around RMB 49.6 billion) in June this year, achieving a post-investment valuation exceeding $50 billion (around RMB 335.3 billion). In July, Reuters reported that DeepSeek was undergoing a new funding round that valued the company at RMB 500 billion.
According to earlier Reuters reports citing sources and investor documents, in the June financing round, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng personally invested RMB 20 billion, Tencent contributed RMB 10 billion, and CATL invested RMB 5 billion. Consequently, Tencent and CATL have become DeepSeek's largest external shareholders.
On the product front, DeepSeek has accelerated its roadmap. On September 10th, DeepSeek officially launched DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, a model featuring a new architecture. This 552B-parameter MoE model is the smallest in DeepSeek's new series but outperforms several flagship models, including DeepSeek V4 Pro.
As both capital and product initiatives progress in parallel, recent reports of an incoming CFO and the engagement of CITIC Securities for IPO preparations signal that DeepSeek's public listing process is gathering pace.
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