Back to Devoured - June 19, 2026
DEVOURED
‘No poaching' our people, China's AI behemoth DeepSeek reportedly tells investors

‘No poaching' our people, China's AI behemoth DeepSeek reportedly tells investors

AI startuppolicy CNBC
DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng has reportedly made a 'no-poaching' agreement a non-negotiable condition for investors in the startup's $7.4 billion funding round.
What: The Hangzhou-based company reached a $50 billion valuation. The strict talent retention clause follows high-profile departures of core researchers, including contributors to its V3 model, to domestic rivals like Xiaomi.
Why it matters: This highlights the extreme volatility of the Chinese AI talent market, where major tech giants are aggressively cannibalizing specialized research teams from startups to accelerate their AGI development.
Deep dive
  • DeepSeek’s valuation hit $50 billion following its first external fundraising round.
  • The startup has historically prioritized research over commercialization, but is now forced to defend its intellectual property and headcount.
  • Talent flight is rampant, with key researchers moving to tech giants like Tencent, Xiaomi, and ByteDance.
  • The 'no-poaching' condition is an unconventional attempt to stabilize the company's research core amid intense competition.
Decoder
  • AGI (Artificial General Intelligence): AI systems that possess the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide variety of tasks at a level comparable to a human.
Original article

Key Points

  • DeepSeek reportedly closed its first external funding round this week, which valued the AI lab at over $50 billion.
  • Founder Liang Wenfeng has a non-negotiable term for investors: no poaching DeepSeek's staff or encouraging them to start their own companies, according to a report.

China's DeepSeek has a precondition for its $7.4 billion maiden fundraise: no poaching the AI lab's talents.

During a four-hour virtual meeting with prospective investors in May, founder Liang Wenfeng told participants on the call that a condition of investing in DeepSeek was a promise not to poach the startup's staff or encourage them to start their own companies, a fundraising-focused news outlet owned by 36Kr reported Wednesday. CNBC couldn't independently verify the report.

The unusual talent-poaching precondition underscores how the contest among Chinese tech giants to build advanced AI, and eventually AGI, has tipped into open competition for engineers.

DeepSeek reportedly closed its first external funding round this week, which valued the Hangzhou-based company at more than $50 billion and made it China's most valuable AI-only startup. The startup, which had turned down outside funding since its inception to focus on research instead of commercialization, sought the latest fundraise after losing a number of key researchers to rivals.

Luo Fuli, a core contributor to its V3 model, left late last year to lead Xiaomi's MiMo team, which has since released AI models that outperformed DeepSeek's own on several benchmarks.

ByteDance has lost two key AI developers to Tencent, 36kr reported in March, citing sources. The Information reported on Monday, citing sources, that Tencent had invested $20 million in a new AI lab founded by Juyang Lin, former lead researcher for Alibaba's Qwen models.

Lin said in March he stepped down from Qwen. Alibaba replaced the head of its corporate-focused Dingtalk app after an internal debate about the unit's role in the company's overall AI strategy, Bloomberg reported in June, citing sources.

Eyeing talent that trained at frontrunning U.S. labs, Tencent hired Yao Shunyu from OpenAI to become chief AI scientist for the Chinese tech company last year.

Both Yao and DeepSeek's Liang see China's path forward in fully committing to developing AGI — AI with human-level or above capabilities.

DeepSeek, Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Explore all 55 articles in today's digest

Fresh dev news, AI-digested daily. Never miss a trend at devoured.fyi